Case Studies
St Stanislaus College – Disaster Recovery
Client:
St Stanislaus College
Industry:
Education
Services Rendered:
Design & Implementation (Data Centre)
About St Stanislaus College
Discover how St Stanislaus’ College partnered with S5 Technology Group to modernise its ageing data centre, slashing backup times, improving disaster recovery, and boosting cybersecurity with a resilient, cost-effective infrastructure refresh.
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The Challenge
- Legacy systems
- Long backups times
- High costs
St Stanislaus’ College (Stannies) faced a pressing challenge with its ageing IT infrastructure. Their legacy data centre was approaching end-of-life, lacking vendor support, and struggling to meet the 24/7 operational demands of a boarding school. System performance was deteriorating, with backups taking excessive time and impacting recovery capabilities.
Disaster recovery readiness was a growing concern, particularly given rising cybersecurity threats. The college needed a modern, resilient, and cost-effective solution to support its core IT services, including academic applications, student access, and operational management. With an increasing focus on security and efficiency, Stannies sought a partner to deliver a seamless data centre refresh without disruption to daily school operations.
The Solution
S5 Technology Group was engaged to design and implement a future-proof data centre solution for Stannies. Our approach began with a thorough assessment of the existing infrastructure, understanding performance bottlenecks, backup inefficiencies, and disaster recovery gaps. The goal was to deliver a solution that was compact, power-efficient, and resilient.
Our Approach
To achieve this, S5 specified and deployed a Dellbased 3-node VMware cluster, backed by an allflash storage array to significantly improve performance. This architecture provided high availability, scalability, and energy efficiency. Veeam backup was implemented, ensuring fast, reliable backups with additional security through immutable snapshots stored in Wasabi’s cloud storage. The immutable storage added a crucial layer of ransomware protection, safeguarding critical college data.
A key innovation in the project was S5’s predeployment strategy—engineering the entire solution in our workshop before deployment. This rigorous testing ensured a seamless, disruption-free rollout at Stannies. The transition was completed without downtime, allowing IT operations to continue uninterrupted.
By addressing both performance and security concerns, S5 not only modernised the college’s IT infrastructure but also reinforced its cybersecurity posture. The result was a highly resilient data centre that reduced operational risks, cut backup times dramatically, and enhanced disaster recovery capabilities.
The Outcome
- Improved DR capability
- Significantly reduced backup times
- Reduced costs
The new data centre transformed IT operations at Stannies. Backups that previously took hours now run in minutes, significantly reducing downtime in the event of data recovery. The allflash storage array and VMware cluster improved system performance, providing a seamless user experience. The addition of immutable storage strengthened ransomware resilience, ensuring critical school data remains protected.
By engineering the deployment in-house, S5 minimised disruption, allowing the school to continue its operations uninterrupted. The modernised infrastructure not only improved disaster recovery but also optimised operational costs through enhanced efficiency and reduced power consumption.
Stannies now benefits from a secure, highperformance IT environment that supports its 24/7 demands while future-proofing its digital infrastructure.
