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To keep its students on the path to academic success, Majmaah University offers slick, easy-to-
use e-learning and admin services built on a high-performance software-defined storage
solution from Lenovo and Microsoft.

Microsoft Lenovo

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Whether its checking that a textbook is available in the faculty library or enrolling on a new
course for next semester, students depend on online services to navigate university life
nowadays. And thats not to mention accessing course notes, lecture handouts and past exam
papers from shared file systems.
Although todays students often take these services for granted, expecting to be able to do
anything and everything on their smartphones, not many appreciate what makes these services
tick.
Having a high-performance, reliable IT infrastructure is absolutely essential to delivering
quality services to students and staff, says Nashmy AL-Rasheedy, Head of the Operating
Systems Department at Majmaah University.
MU is one of Saudi Arabias leading universities, founded in 2009 to meet growing demand for
higher education across the country. Today, more than 16,000 students and 3,000 staff work on
campus.
Unfortunately, services were a little shaky over the last couple of years, continues Nashmy AL-
Rasheedy.
The storage area network [SAN] systems supporting all of our student-facing and back-end
applications, as well as our shared file system, were getting old and performance was patchy.
On top of that, network bandwidth left a lot to be desired.
This caused problems for students and staff trying to access applications and files: the interface
was slow, took ages to load, and sometimes the connection would drop halfway through a task.
Not ideal.
Id been reading a lot about software-defined storage, especially Microsoft Storage Spaces
Direct [S2D], comments Nashmy AL-Rasheedy. It got us thinking: why dont we do that?
 So they did! MU implemented seven Lenovo System x3650 M5 servers, all equipped with
Intel Xeon E5 processors, as a single cloud configuration cluster for S2D. We chose Lenovo
servers and switches because they offered the best performance and reliability at the best
price, says Nashmy AL-Rasheedy. Whats more, they were certified by Microsoft for S2D.
He recalls: The Lenovo team architected the solution to ensure maximum ROI, and we were
then able to install the servers and build the cluster ourselves. The Lenovo team also helped us
out a great deal with the switching and network configuration, which was great. Then we
migrated all of our business applications, databases and files over to the Lenovo S2D cluster
our student information system, web portals, e-learning system, email server, ERP etc.
everything that keeps the university up and running.
Performance has improved greatly since moving everything over to the Lenovo S2D cluster.
Students and staff now have quick, reliable access to all the services they need. Signing up for
a class online? Fast and simple. Downloading lecture notes onto your laptop? No more waiting
around. Completing a course online? No problem.
Nashmy AL-Rasheedy comments: Lots of student services were pretty slow before, which was
frustrating for many. Now everybody can do what they need to whenever it suits them, quickly
and easily. And that goes for staff as well as students!
He concludes: The project has been a great success. We would like to thank the management
board of Majmaah University, the IT deanship staff and our Lenovo Business Partner, Ideal
Network Solutions, for their contribution during the installation and for their continuous support.

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Students are no longer content with books, pens and paper. They expect to be able to check their
;timetable, their reading lists and their course requirements online; to sign up for classes in a few clicks
to share notes and essays in an instant. To deliver the services students want, fast, Majmaah University
relies on a Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) software-defined storage solution from Lenovo and Microsoft.

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( )Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) software-defined storage solution

) ( Solution components

Hardware

Lenovo System x3650 M5 with Intel Xeon E5 processors Lenovo RackSwitch G8272 Lenovo RackSwitch
) ( G8052 IBM Tape Library TS3200 LT07 for Lenovo

Software

Lenovo XClarity Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Edition with Storage Spaces Direct
) ( Microsoft Hyper-V