Case Study: Spring Branch ISD achieves 30% growth and an 83% smaller data center with Dell Technologies' Azure Stack HCI

Spring Branch ISD supports 30% growth in 3 months on infrastructure that’s 83% smaller with Dell EMC Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI

Spring Branch ISD, a Houston K–12 district serving 35,000 students across 47 schools, needed to modernize aging infrastructure to support remote and hybrid learning, fast access to enterprise and education apps, and tighter budgets. To build a hybrid-cloud, the district partnered with Dell Technologies and chose Dell EMC Solutions for Azure Stack HCI to replace its end-of-life systems.

Dell Technologies deployed a 12-node Azure Stack HCI cluster, live-migrated 162 VMs with zero downtime, and provided ongoing services and management. The solution supported 30% growth in three months without adding nodes, handled thousands of additional concurrent VPN users, shrank the data-center footprint by 83%, sped up reporting by 87%, cut power/cooling/maintenance costs, reduced performance-related help-desk tickets (about a 75% drop), and delivered 99.999% uptime.

Spring Branch ISD

Ben Allen

Senior System Engineer