University of Canberra

Wednesday, 07 February 2024 12:19

University of Canberra optimises cloud with Nutanix Featured

By Kenn Anthony Mendoza

University of Canberra chief information officer Matt Carmichael

The University of Canberra (UC) has deployed Nutanix Cloud Platform to slash its IT infrastructure costs and optimise its cloud computing.

UC’s cloud/network architecture comprises several elements of the Nutanix Cloud Platform. But the latest implementation features the NCM Cost Governance Solution, one which, according to UC chief information officer Matt Carmichael, had an “immediate impact.”

“We have a small IT team, and the tool gives us a single pane of glass to monitor our usage across Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud, automatically alerting us to any ‘gotchas’ where spend might tick up and we don’t know why,” he said. “That has saved us a couple times. One instance was when our backups in Google Cloud weren’t being aged out appropriately, increasing our bills exponentially. We were able to quickly get it back in line with Nutanix technology.”

Carmichael said these cost savings were just the tip of the iceberg as previous implementations had drastically reduced the University’s IT expenses and infrastructure needs.

“Using Nutanix to implement our private cloud was a major reason we were able to replace our disaster recovery (DR) datacentre with a micro datacentre,” he said. “This meant when we needed a new DR facility, it only required three racks of space, instead of the existing 24; this led to upfront financial savings of around $2 million, and ongoing savings in operational costs and energy usage.”

“Further, we’ve been able to consolidate the server and storage assets we need by 78% which led to an additional projected saving of more than $1.5 million as we didn’t have to purchase all that new equipment.”

Carmichael said as existing infrastructure reached the end of its lifecycle, workloads previously running on three-tier architecture were migrated to Nutanix.

Today, more than 90% of the University’s core applications run on Nutanix Cloud Platform, including the key student management, finance, human resources, and database systems.

“What we saw as we migrated more workloads to Nutanix was massive consolidation in the IT hardware we needed – we saw shrinking in our datacentre footprint requirements almost immediately,” he said. “It was also much easier to manage and support, particularly with seamless one-click upgrades. Previously, our traditional infrastructure meant we had all these different hoops you had to jump through.”

Aside from cutting operational costs, the Nutanix Cloud Platform has provided AI and deep learning to improve the quality of teaching.

“We recently added undergraduate specialist majors in Robotics, AI, and Data Science, a Masters of Data Science, and Post Graduate specialisations in AI and Machine Learning. To teach these courses effectively requires a significantly increased capacity for GPU-enabled computing resources,” Carmichael said.

The Nutanix End User Computing (EUC) allowed students to work on their assessments and research from anywhere without requiring expensive terminals. They can use their laptops, log-in to the VDI portal, and access all resources they need.

“Improving the student experience by offering a flexible, remotely accessible teaching environment with enough computing resources for AI and deep learning is one of the strategic goals of the Faculty of Science and Technology.”

Carmichael said postgraduate researchers – such as those conducting research at the University’s Visual and Decision Analytics Lab (Videa) and the Australian Geospatial Health Lab (AGeoH-L) – were also able to easily access all the computing power they required as Nutanix’s platform enables UC to scale up or down as needed in UC’s research cluster.

The University’s first partnership with Nutanix technology was in 2013 when it was looking to transform its legacy three-tier infrastructure and reduce the complexity of its IT architecture.

Carmichael said he has since worked closely with its technology partner, QIRX, throughout his digital transformation journey. QIRX is also an authorised Nutanix reseller.

“QIRX has been a very stable partner for us,” he said. “When we originally went to Nutanix, they were brave enough right at the beginning because it was such a new technology, they were early adopters in bringing that to the table. We bought our first cluster from them and have procured through them ever since.”

Nutanix APJ general manager and vice president Aaron White said UC was at the cutting edge of AI and deep learning innovation.

“The next generation of innovators and world-changers are studying right now at University of Canberra,” White said. “We’re only just beginning to understand the full potential of AI, and it’s the hands-on research underway in our nation’s capital that will shape the future of our nation.”

This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 06 February 2024.

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