First Major K-12 Education Campus in Western Australia to Deploy New IP Networking Technology from Brocade
Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) announced that Mazenod College has become one of the first high schools in Australia to embrace New IP networking as part of a comprehensive campus LAN upgrade. The Brocade® networking solution has enabled the school to guarantee that each of its 850 students have access up to 100 Mbps of bandwidth on the network at all times. It also allows the school to maximise the use of locally hosted high-definition video, multimedia and other content utilised in enhanced teaching and learning activities.
Founded in 1966, Mazenod College is a Catholic secondary college for boys in years 7-12, located in Lesmurdie, Western Australia. It is one of three schools run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) and the only OMI school in Western Australia. Last year, Mazenod College bumped up against the limitations of its existing network infrastructure. Its legacy wired and wireless campus network could no longer cope with growing demand from laptops, tablets, and interactive data projectors for access to multimedia assets, which were stored on central IP SAN andNAS arrays. This slowed down the students in all 45 classrooms using their work folders and access materials at the start of each lesson.
“Fast wired and wireless network access is an absolute must for us to deliver high-quality computing experience for every department, as well as for all students, teachers, and parents,” said Hugo van Niekerk, ICT director of Mazenod College. “We also required a smart, agile network that could support changes on the fly, such as a last-minute classroom shift, with the technology automatically ‘moving’ with the teacher.”
“Brocade offered us a great solution in terms of technology, price, and support that integrates well with the rest of our infrastructure,” van Niekerk added. “It has enabled us to establish an advanced campus ‘nervous system’ that has already delivered tremendous improvements and created the foundation for us to provide some exciting innovations.”
With the new Brocade network in place, students now receive Microsoft OneNote class updates from teachers in their work folders in just 20 seconds—a process that used to take up to 15 minutes. Leveraging greatly increased network capacity, Mazenod College is currently testing a system based on Microsoft SharePoint that will enable each lesson to be captured in real time, allowing students to replay classes in high definition, on demand. The school has also been able to implement a strong disaster recovery solution for the first time, with a 100 terabyte storage array housed in a concrete bunker.
“We supported Mazenod College through a very successful proof-of-concept test prior to the deployment of our solution, in time for the start of the school year,” said Adam Judd, vice president for Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) at Brocade. “Schools want networks that simply work and meet their needs without a lot of administrative effort. The new Mazenod campus network is a great example of just how simple this can be. With built-in intelligence to automate what were previously manual tasks, teachers can now save time and put more focus on their students.”
Brocade ICX® 7250 campus network switches have been deployed throughout Mazenod College, providing 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports for wired devices with each of the school’s new Fortinet 802.11ac wireless access points. These are connected via dual 1 GbE ports combined into a 2 Gbps link aggregation group. The campus network core is provided by Brocade VDX® 6740 data center switches. Brocade VCS® Fabric technology creates a self-forming, self-healing Ethernet fabric with 10 GbE optical links to the school’s servers and the campus access switches. The Brocade VDX 6740 switches in the VCS fabric support Network File System (NFS) and Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) storage systems.
In addition, Mazenod College is using Brocade Network Advisor, an easy-to-use application with Brocade’s networking best-practices built in. This provides a single point of insight and control over the school’s campus network operation. The entire Brocade infrastructure is covered under a five-year, 24x7 maintenance contract to help ensure that the school’s “nervous system” delivers optimal performance.
Additional Resources
- About Brocade VDX 6740 switches
- About Brocade ICX 7250 switches
About Brocade
Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) networking solutions help the world’s leading organisations turn their networks into platforms for business innovation. With solutions spanning public and private data centers to the network edge, Brocade is leading the industry in its transition to the New IP network infrastructures required for today’s era of digital business. (http://www.brocade.com/)
# # #
© 2016 Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Brocade, Brocade Assurance, the B-wing symbol, ClearLink, DCX, Fabric OS, HyperEdge, ICX, MLX, MyBrocade, OpenScript, VCS, VDX, Vplane, and Vyatta are registered trademarks, and Fabric Vision is a trademark of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. Other brands, products, or service names mentioned may be trademarks of others.