FEATURE: DATA CENTRES
learning is delivered to learners across the
world, mainly because of the high Digital
Intelligence Quotient (DQ) that exists in
developed markets,” said Vlok. “At Curro,
we want to deliver education centred
around the learner, and all our systems
must support this insight-driven educational
experience that enable learners to absorb
learning better, wherever they are.”
between schools of teachers, learners and
learning resources.”
As it started to scale, Curro identified issues
within its data centre strategy, particularly
with Disaster Recovery and redundancy.
Its hardware assets were reaching endof-service
life, but instead of ripping and
replacing these assets, Vlok and his team
OUR VIRTUALISED VMWARE DATA
CENTRE LETS US MARRY OUR
PHYSICAL ASSETS TO THE PHYSICAL
APPLICATION AND CENTRALLY
MANAGE THEM.
Curro’s technology landscape is made up
of a centralised data centre, on-site data
centres and an intricate network fabric that
needs to cater for over 60,000 endpoints
and supports 11 terabytes of traffic a day.
“Unlike other school (K-12) technology
ecosystems, ours is run as a centralised
network that integrates all our business
and educational systems. Our centralised
enterprise network is a key differentiator in
our approach to the Digital Transformation
journey, as most other school networks or
districts run their own systems and only
integrate the information between them. In
our business, everything from cybersecurity,
educational platforms and business
systems, is centralised,” said Vlok.
It is this very setup that Vlok said formed
its decision to pair with VMware. “It
required a data centre solution that could
help it execute on a hybrid cloud strategy
and still support and leverage current
hardware investments. The movement of
educators, learners and digital resources
within the school system required a reevaluation
of the network ecosystem,” said
Vlok. “It required a solution that would
let it leverage the benefits of a cloud-first
strategy without devaluing the investments
made in the existing infrastructure.
Practically, the solution has to allow for
sharing, movement and collaboration
wanted a technology solution that would
use these assets as a storage, processing
and memory pool for the next seven–eight
years. This would then help it transition, on
its terms, between a full on-premise and full
cloud solution, without having to write off
the hardware investments made.
Education that is always-on
After extensive investigations, Curro
partnered with First Technology Western
Cape, a VMware reseller and systems
integrator, to help the company deploy a
virtual data centre.
The solution included VMware VSAN,
VMware vSphere, and all the sub-services
within VSAN.
“Investment into Digital Transformation
gets stuck at the point of technology
execution because of infrastructure costs.
Our virtualised VMware data centre lets us
marry our physical assets to the physical
application and centrally manage them
while adding a cloud fabric where it makes
sense. In short, we can digitally transform
and leverage the benefits of the cloud
without expecting users to change the way
they work,” said Vlok.
With VSAN, the company is less hardwaredependant
and turned its traditional, often
idle infrastructure, into a high-availability
data centre using a VSAN stretched cluster
– enabling it to perform Disaster Recovery
more effectively. Vlok says he is now able to
significantly improve the management of
the demand-driven technology requirement
by ‘bursting and shrinking’ cloud capacity
from his cloud service providers.
“Our core product is education which is
available at all times – in the classroom
or remotely. In Africa, we still face
bandwidth challenges, so our new
infrastructure lessens the reliance on
bandwidth by delivering a robust multicloud
and on-premise offering, stretching
across both.”
Bridging the digital
education divide
Vlok says the environment now supports
its desire to provide reliable education
anywhere, and learners working remotely
now have access to the same platforms
they would have had at schools, bridging
the gap between traditional schooling and
the various forms of remote schooling.
By virtualising a large proportion of its
services, it is more agile and can write
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