Case Study: IlliniCloud slashes storage costs and ensures reliable cloud services with F5 Networks' BIG‑IP and ARX

Illinois School Districts Get Affordable Cloud Services, Cut Storage Costs with BIG-IP Products and ARX

IlliniCloud, a non-profit cooperative that hosts administrative, multimedia and library applications for K–12 districts across Illinois, faced rapid data growth (up to 300% annually for some districts), limited budgets, and lack of disaster-recovery capabilities. To deliver affordable, reliable cloud services and control escalating storage costs, IlliniCloud selected F5 Networks solutions—deploying BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager appliances and the ARX storage virtualization platform.

F5 Networks implemented a redundant pair of BIG-IP LTMs for intelligent load balancing, SSL offload and application optimization, and ARX for policy-based storage tiering and virtualization. The deployment improved availability and performance, reclaimed roughly 80% of tier‑1 fibre‑channel capacity, reduced backup windows by 80%, paid for the ARX investment in under a year, and enabled IlliniCloud to charge members $200 per server versus an estimated $4,000 (about 95% savings), while extending cloud and DR services to member districts.

IlliniCloud

Jason Radford

System Administrator