Case Study: Lancaster University reduces data-center footprint 75% and migrates 3,000 VMs in under 3 weeks with Dell Technologies PowerEdge MX

How Lancaster University uses PowerEdge MX to deliver first-rate student and administrative services

Lancaster University, a growing U.K. higher-education institution, needed a fast, flexible, always‑on IT infrastructure to support student services, research and administration while addressing shadow IT and rapid growth. To modernize its data center the university selected Dell Technologies’ Dell EMC PowerEdge MX kinetic modular infrastructure (PowerEdge MX series) alongside VMware vSphere/vSAN and Dell management tools.

Dell Technologies deployed PowerEdge MX chassis with MX740c compute and MX5016s storage sleds, fabric networking and OpenManage integration to virtualize and simplify operations. The implementation consolidated server resources by 75% (reducing the data‑center footprint from four racks to one), migrated nearly 3,000 VMs in under three weeks with no downtime, significantly cut power and cooling costs, and delivered faster, more responsive private‑cloud services and simplified management.

Lancaster University

Matthew Storey

Head of Storage and Virtualisation