Case Study: Indian Hills Community College achieves 100x reduction in desktop power costs with NetApp

IHCC Slashes Power Costs by 100X with VMware View on NetApp

Indian Hills Community College (IHCC), a multi-campus community college in Iowa serving over 8,000 students, faced rising IT costs, aging SAN infrastructure, server sprawl, and increased demand from growing online programs amid state budget cuts. The college needed to streamline desktop and server management, cut power and cooling expenses, and improve backup and disaster recovery while maintaining quality services across 11 sites.

Working with IP Pathways, IHCC implemented NetApp FAS3240/FAS2040 storage with VMware vSphere and VMware View to centralize about 500 virtual desktops and virtualize servers. The move cut physical servers from 40 to 3, reduced storage needs by up to 80% with deduplication, enabled rapid server/desktop deployment, eliminated tape backups with SnapMirror/SnapRestore for a 2-hour RPO, and slashed desktop power costs by a factor of 100—allowing the college to sustain services with the same small IT staff.

Indian Hills Community College

Shane Molyneux

CIO