Case Study: Arizona State University achieves server consolidation and improved reliability with Citrix XenServer and NetScaler

ASU consolidates servers and improves reliability with XenServer and NetScaler

Arizona State University (ASU), the largest public research university in the U.S. with over 70,000 students across four major campuses, tasked its University Technology Office with meeting escalating campus IT demands while “doing more with less.” Facing growing device counts, rising bandwidth needs and a strategic goal of 99.9% uptime, ASU needed a more reliable, scalable way to deliver web and application services and to consolidate servers and reduce costs.

ASU standardized on Citrix NetScaler (MPX 7500/7000 Platinum) for load balancing, web/app delivery, SSL offload and application firewalling, and moved nearly all server workloads to Citrix XenServer (about 100 hosts running 800+ VMs) with HA and StorageLink site recovery. The result: higher uptime and capacity (handling 10,000–20,000 concurrent users), much faster provisioning, fewer physical servers, and significant cost savings (annual server spending cut from roughly $1M to about $250K), plus improved manageability and reliability.

Arizona State University

Greg Wilson

Project Manager and IT Systems Architect