Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) offers classroom and online education to over 100,000 students. KCTCS is using Microsoft® System Center data center solutions in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta to improve e-mail availability and performance and to simplify e-mail management. KCTCS has reduced problem resolution times by 66 percent and can expand its messaging servers by 50 percent without increasing IT staff.

Business Needs

Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) has 16 colleges and 67 campuses throughout the state and growing online offerings. Based in Versailles, Kentucky, KCTCS offers certificates, diplomas, and two-year associate degrees in more than 600 programs. KCTCS serves over 100,000 students and has 8,000 employees.
 
Because staff and students are spread all over the state, e-mail messaging is the primary communications conduit among staff, students, and faculty. “E-mail is probably the most used application in our enterprise,” says Tony Eversole, IT Project Manager at Kentucky Community and Technical College System. “Stability and performance are huge for us; we don’t have service-level agreements with the colleges, but we definitely hear about it when something goes down.” Recently, when the provider that hosts the college’s 20 servers running Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 lost power, KCTCS experienced six hours of e-mail down-time—a catastrophe for staff, students, and Eversole.

The college had already decided to create a disaster recovery site to prevent such outages, but this would mean more messaging servers and management work for Eversole and his lone IT colleague. “Two of us already manage 130 servers, and those servers are located all over the state,” Eversole says. “With the economic downturn, our state education budgets have been cut by 12 percent. We are always looking for infrastructure management efficiencies that will enable us to do more with less.”

Solution

In 2009, it was time for KCTCS to refresh its server hardware, and it upgraded to the Windows Server® 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system to use Hyper-V™ virtualization technology to lower hardware and management costs. It also decided to deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta, as part of the Microsoft Technology Adopter Program, to take advantage of improved service-level and performance monitoring and features that improve messaging management.

We will be far more proactive using the Exchange Server 2010 management pack. We’re able to see issues that could lead to downtime. When problems do arise, we can resolve them 66 percent faster. Tony Eversole IT Project Manager, Kentucky Community and Technical College System

KCTCS had long used Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 to monitor its servers and deployed the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 management pack to monitor Exchange Server 2010. This management pack is authored by Microsoft developers and brings together best practices for analyzing the performance, availability, configuration, and security of Exchange Server messaging servers.

“Using the management pack shortcuts problem resolution times, because it zeroes in on the problem source,” Eversole says. “It also generates proactive alerts about any issue, such as a messaging database performance problem, that could escalate into a failure.”

For example, Eversole receives notifications of Exchange Server queue buildups and their causes so that he can take immediate action. “We have better insight into e-mail flow and server performance without all the tedious manual work required before.”

KCTCS plans to use Hyper-V to replicate its 20 messaging servers as virtual machines at a disaster recovery site. Eversole will use System Center Operations Manager 2007 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to manage both physical and virtual servers in both locations.

KCTCS also uses Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta to back up its Exchange Server 2010 stores. “With System Center Data Protection Manager, we have disk-based backup for the first time and also faster message restores and more restore points,” Eversole says. “We can monitor our messaging disk and tape backups from one console.”

Benefits

By monitoring Exchange Server 2010 with System Center Operations Manager 2007, KCTCS can ensure higher messaging availability and performance and lower costs. It will also slash backup and recovery times using System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta.

Messaging Availability Improves

By creating a disaster-recovery location, KCTCS will increase messaging uptime from 90 to 99.9 percent. In addition, by managing Exchange Server 2010 with System Center Operations Manager 2007, the college will further improve uptime by ten percent. “We can be far more proactive using the Exchange Server 2010 management pack,” Eversole says. “We’re able to see issues that could lead to downtime. When problems do arise, we can resolve them 66 percent faster—in 10 minutes rather than the 30 minutes required before.”

Performance Increases Ten Percent

KCTCS is also experiencing a boost in messaging performance. “By upgrading to Exchange Server 2010, we enjoy an immediate 70-percent decrease in storage I/O [input/output], which is a 70-percent performance increase,” Eversole says. “By using System Center Operations Manager 2007 to analyze messaging server performance, we will achieve an additional ten percent performance improvement.”

Backups Slashed by 19 Hours

With the previous backup software, a full backup of the Exchange Server environment required 20 hours; with System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta, it is protected every 15 minutes. “System Center totally changes the way we do backups,” Eversole says. “Now we can do full backups every day instead of only twice a week. Recovery times are much faster, too.”

Staff Costs Remain Stable Despite Infrastructure Growth

With the move to Exchange Server 2010, KCTCS switched from a storage area network to less expensive direct-access storage and doubled its storage for half the cost. However, the IT staff will have more storage to manage, in addition to the new servers at the disaster recovery site, and another 10 to 20 servers required to accommodate an anticipated 75,000 online students. But, Eversole isn’t worried. “Using System Center, we are able to grow our environment without expanding our headcount,” he says. “There’s no way that two people could manage such a dynamic environment otherwise.”

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