Case Study: Czech Technical University achieves faster virtual desktops and 60% storage savings with NetApp All Flash FAS

CTU’s Faculty of Civil Engineering Accelerates Virtual Classrooms with NetApp ONTAP 9 on All Flash FAS

Czech Technical University’s Faculty of Civil Engineering needed highly available, high‑performance storage to support expanding virtual classrooms and a growing VDI environment (from 150 to a target 500 desktops). After four years on its prior NetApp systems, the faculty faced slow application load times (up to 3 minutes 20 seconds), limited throughput for always‑on VDI sessions, and a need for greater storage efficiency and faster desktop refreshes.

FCE deployed NetApp All Flash FAS with MetroCluster and ONTAP 9—separating VDI (2‑node All Flash FAS, 5 TB) from user data (55 TB MetroCluster) and using NetApp SupportEdge services. The solution reclaimed about 60% of storage capacity, cut application load times to ~20 seconds, sped up virtual desktop turnaround, enabled self‑service restores via Snapshots, improved availability with 24/7 monitoring, and allowed reuse of legacy systems as backup while enabling future rapid cloning with VMware VCAI.

Czech Technical University

Peter Ivančík

Head of Servers, Storage, and Networking