St Mary MacKillop College

St Mary MacKillop College in Canberra, Australia, upgrades their Allied Telesis network to a next generation solution, providing the school with the reliability and performance they need.

Success Story

Overview

CUSTOMER PROFILE

St Mary MacKillop CollegeSt Mary MacKillop College Canberra, formerly known as MacKillop Catholic College, is a co-educational school for Years 7 - 12 students. It is located in the Tuggeranong Valley in Canberra, the capital city of Australia. The largest school in Canberra, the College operates under the governance of the Catholic Education Office of the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn.

There are two campuses which are located approximately five kilometres apart. Students in Years 7 - 9 are based on the Wanniassa Campus, and students in Years 10 - 12 are based on the Isabella Campus.

The College motto is “Faith and Courage” which reflects and honours Saint Mary MacKillop, after whom the College is named.

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In 2012, St Mary MacKillop College, in Canberra, Australia decided to upgrade their existing network infrastructure to include new, high performing switches.

The College had been an Allied Telesis customer for some time – they already had Allied Telesis equipment, which they had installed in 2007. They were using AT-9924T switches in the network core, and Allied Telesis edge switches.

The College has two campuses, which are located five kilometres apart. Prior to this upgrade, the College had been managing their network as two separate, almost independent sites, which were connected via a 10Mbps microwave link. In order to improve their infrastructure management and reduce operational expenditure, they decided to consolidate and virtualize their two sites.

The upgrade rebuilt the network core using Allied Telesis SwitchBlade x8100 and x610 Series switches, bringing stability and enhanced performance, as well as a future-proof and scalable architecture.

St Mary Mackillop College choose Allied TelesisSt Mary MacKillop College Canberra chose an Allied Telesis advanced solution to provide the school with the high performing network it needs.

Also competing for the deal were HP and Brocade. The College chose Allied Telesis because of the extremely high level of support they offer. Other key factors in the decision included:

■ the reliability and performance of the College’s former Allied Telesis solution

■ the resilient design and capacity of the SwitchBlade x8112 chassis

■ the flexibility to easily expand the network ■ the ability to simplify and automate network

management

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The network requirements

The College’s main requirements for the new solution were to reduce costs, and improve the stability and performance of the network. Enhanced performance would allow faster network backups and data transfer, as well as improve the operation of the school’s digital telephony (VoIP) system. They also needed the ability to easily expand and upgrade the network in the future.

With a major goal of cost reduction – both the cost of the infrastructure itself, and the time cost for staff managing the environment – all services needed to be consolidated and hosted within the data center at one campus. The other campus data center was to be used for backup and as a Disaster Recovery (DR) site.

Students in Years 7 - 9 are based on the Wanniassa Campus, and students in Years 10 - 12 are based on the Isabella Campus, so seamless access to online resources and applications was required in both locations. The required level of network access was not possible using their existing microwave link, so the College needed to have a 48 core fiber laid between the two sites.

Working with local integrator and service provider, alpha dot net, the College was able to have their own dedicated fiber laid between the two campuses. With extensive experience in multi-site connectivity and project management, alpha dot net was able to deliver a solution that exceeded the Colleges expectations and was within their budget. This increases the available bandwidth both now and into the future, to support the next generation of e-learning tools and online access requirements.

WanniassaCampus

Network Attached Storage

Virtualized Servers

Isabella Campus10 Gigabit link

1 Gigabit linkLink aggregation

x 12

x 20

Mirrored Servers

Storage Back-up

SBx8100

8000GS

8000GS

8000GS

8000GS

x610x610

St Mary MacKillop College’s new network

The College selected an Allied Telesis Switchblade x8112 chassis-based core switch for their primary data center core at the Wanniassa campus. The SwitchBlade x8112 provides up to 1.92Tbps switching capacity, for a high-performing solution that exceeds the requirements the College had for their virtualized server and storage environment. This powerful new network core guarantees access to information with dual control cards, dual power supplies, and line cards which are all hot-swappable to maximize uptime.

The Wanniassa campus and Isabella campus are now connected over the College’s new high-speed fiber link with 20Gbps bandwidth, as shown in the diagram.

The Isabella campus has x610 Series switches in the core, which use Virtual Chassis Stacking (VCStack) to create a single virtual unit. VCStack allows multiple switches to appear as a single virtual chassis. In normal operation, this virtual chassis acts as a single switch, simplifying management. VCStack and link aggregation provide a solution where network mirrored data center resources and edge switches are spread across the virtual chassis members, ensuring device and path resiliency, and uninterrupted access to information.

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The solution

Increased performanceToday, the College has completely virtualized their environment, and can easily migrate services between their datacenters. The bandwidth provided by the fiber upgrade combined with the SwitchBlade x8112 chassis means classrooms of computers and laptops can be efficiently reimaged, regardless of their campus or location, which was impossible before.

The College’s VoIP telephony system used to operate with delay and poor sound quality. This system now works reliably across both sites with perfect sound quality.

Maximized uptime The new network has increased stability and resilience with Allied Telesis SwitchBlade x8100 and x610 Series switches in the core infrastructure. The SwitchBlade x8112 has redundant power supplies and control cards to maximize system uptime. These, along with the line cards and fan tray, are all hot-swappable, so they can be replaced with no disruption to network availability. The x610 switches partner with the SwitchBlade x8112 core chassis to maximize network bandwidth and ensure access to online resources and applications.

ScalabilityAs well as enhanced reliability and performance, the College can now upgrade their network easily and without great expense, thanks to the flexibility of the SwitchBlade x8112. Additional line cards can be seamlessly added to the chassis with no network disruption to increase capacity, or add different connectivity options.

Similarly, additional x610 Series switches can be added to the VCStack to increase port density. These can even be pre-configured as part of the VCStack, for simple plug-and-play network expansion.

Outstanding supportThe College faced some issues with cost, and time constraints, and knew that effective support was a necessity to ensure a smooth transition to a new high-performing network. Allied Telesis provided outstanding support in partnering with the College in their upgrade project.

“The support from Allied Telesis is incredible. Being able to access design assistance or technical support in a timely fashion, without the expense we would encounter with other vendors, is of immense value to us”.

Sam Walton, Network Administrator, St Mary Mackillop College

Future plansIn the near future, St Mary Mackillop College want to upgrade their edge switches to newer Allied Telesis advanced edge switching technology.

As the College looks to further improve and simplify the management of their infrastructure, and reduce operational expenditure, they will be deploying Allied Telesis Management Framework (AMF).

AMF is a sophisticated suite of management tools that provide a simplified approach to network management. Common tasks are automated and everyday running of a network is made extremely simple. Powerful features like centralized management, auto-backup, auto-upgrade, auto-provisioning and auto-recovery enable plug-and-play networking and zero-touch management.

As an innovative new technology, AMF enables schools to simplify the deployment and ongoing management of their network to more efficiently use the resources they have.

Allied Telesis look forward to supporting St Mary Mackillop College well into the future as they continue to provide leading online educational tools to their staff and students.

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Benefits of the solution

Featured products

SwitchBlade® x8100 Series

Allied Telesis SwitchBlade x8100 Series Advanced Layer 3+ chassis switches are designed to deliver high availability, wirespeed performance, and a high port count. Two control card options, CFC400 and CFC960, provide solutions for medium and large networks. The ability to stack two chassis when using the CFC960 provides a powerful and completely resilient network core solution, which can even be distributed over long distance.

NExT GENERaTION INTELLIGENT LayER 3+ ChaSSIS SwITChES

x610 SeriesadvaNCEd LayER 3 GIGabIT EThERNET STaCkabLE SwITChES

The Allied Telesis x610 series is the high performing and scalable solution for today’s networks, providing an extensive range of port-density and uplink-connectivity options. 24-port and 48-port versions are available with optional 10 Gigabit uplinks and PoE+ ports. The ability to stack up to eight units includes using fiber for long distance stacking. The x610 Series can connect anything from a small workgroup right up to a large business.

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about allied Telesis, Inc.Founded in 1987, and with offices worldwide, Allied Telesis is a leading provider of networking infrastructure and flexible, interoperable network solutions. The Company provides reliable video, voice and data network solutions to clients in multiple markets including government, healthcare, defense, education, retail, hospitality, and network service providers. Allied Telesis is committed to innovating the way in which services and applications are delivered and managed, resulting in increased value and lower operating costs.

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