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posted on 06 May 2008 17:43

Oxford University is using Acronis products in its Computer Laboratory.

Oxford University Computing Laboratory is the university's Computer Science department within the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division, and one of the world's most respected centres in computing excellence. Each year, the laboratory purchases up to 100 new PCs for its fresh in-take of students, with a machine assigned exclusively to each student for their entire time at the university. It also makes regular purchases to replace obsolete machines in lecture theatres, and ensures all new servers and grant-maintained laptops are fully compatible with the principal applications used within the department.
 
In order to support departmental research projects, the majority of servers, PCs and laptops in the laboratory have to operate with equal speed and reliability in Windows and Linux environments, which requires a dual boot capability. As a consequence, when a new PC or server is purchased, its disks have to be wiped, a new partition installed and all the associated files and applications loaded. 
 
A similar process is carried out for all new laptops, except the Windows files are not deleted, but compressed in order to make space on the drive for the Linux operating system and associated applications. In both cases, this was a very slow and laborious process, often taking in excess of one hour per machine and, as Terry Brown, Computing Officer at Oxford University Computing Laboratory, recalls, wasn't helped by the fact that the incumbent partitioning software hadn't scaled to the laboratory's changing needs.
 
He explains: "Our partitioning software was fine when we bought it a few years ago, but disk sizes have increased and it couldn't cope with the larger volumes in today's machines. As a result, it was having difficulty reading entire disks and, therefore, unable to create fully functioning partitions without manual intervention. This increased the amount of time taken to prepare new machines for use, and put us on the back foot when it came to carrying out general network maintenance and dealing with students' IT queries. In addition, it did not allow us to repartition servers once they had been commissioned. This was becoming an issue for us, as we wanted to be able to make regular adjustments to server resource allocation across our Windows and Linux environments so that we could adapt to changing usage requirements."
 
The laboratory was also looking for a much faster way to install the operating systems, applications and files onto new the new PCs and laptops once the machines had been correctly partitioned. This was being carried out manually as the IT support team had been unable to find a reliable piece of imaging software to automate and streamline the process.
 
After conducting thorough research into partitioning and imaging software and carrying out rigourous testing in the laboratory, Terry Brown took the strategic decision to select Acronis True Image Workstation and Acronis Disk Director and, when the next batch of new PCs arrived at the laboratory, he set about using the software in earnest.

First of all, he used Acronis Disk Director to wipe all the contents of each new machine and to construct a partitioned drive that would allow a dual-boot capability. Once the partitions were correctly set up, he inserted a master CD created by Acronis True Image, which contained a master image including all files and applications, as well as the Windows and Linux operating systems needed to clone each hard drive.
 
Terry Brown recalls that he was immediately impressed with both Acronis Products. "Acronis Disk Director and Acronis True Image are extremely powerful pieces of software, yet are simple and intuitive to use. Unlike many competing solutions, they are consistently dependable, creating stable and reliable partitions and images during each deployment. As a result, they have cut the time taken to prepare a PC for laboratory use by a quarter.
 
"In addition, Acronis True Image provides us with a long-term solution as it was the only imaging software to offer full Windows Vista compatibility when we were reviewing our IT requirements. This will become more important in the next academic year, when the majority of our new machines will run on Vista. Without this functionality we really wouldn't be able to roll-out the next batch of PCs and laptops for use across the department."
 
Acronis Disk Director has also improved installation times for new grant-maintained laptops. Like the laboratory' PCs, each laptop needs to have a dual boot capability in order to give students the choice of running Windows or Linux operating systems. However, the IT support team felt that it wasn't viable to create a master template for laptops as students and lecturers had quite specific needs and wanted to run a large number of bespoke applications.

Terry Brown acknowledges that creating a partitioned drive without causing data loss is quite a specialist task and that Acronis Disk Director is one of only a few partitioning solutions that are capable of it. Acronis Disk Director also allowed the IT support team to wipe their servers after they had been decommissioned  safe in the knowledge that no data would be recoverable.

Oxford University Computer Laboratory has been extremely impressed with the functionality delivered by Acronis True Image and Acronis Disk Director as well as the high level of customer service and support provided by the company. As a result, it has put plans in place to extend use of both pieces of Acronis software in the near future - including more extensive use of Acronis True Image to provide backup and recovery options for all machines within the laboratory.
 
Terry Brown concludes: "Without Acronis Disk Director and Acronis True Image, Oxford University Computer Laboratory would not have been able to continue partitioning or cloning its machines and meet all its other IT support obligations - it's as simple as that. Both pieces of software have proven themselves to be fast, reliable and simple to use and, with that in mind, I don't see any reason why we would not look to extend their current deployment and take advantage of the full of functionality they offer."

About Acronis

Acronis is a global provider of storage management software that enables corporations and individuals to move, manage and maintain digital assets. Acronis sells innovative solutions for disaster recovery, server consolidation and virtualization migration, which allow users to maintain business continuity and reduce downtime in computing environments. Acronis software products are sold in more than 180 countries and are available in 13 languages. For additional information, please visit http://www.acronis.com/ or contact media@acronis.com.

^{[Formatted by Paul Warren.]}