Case Study: Manchester Grammar School achieves scalable, cost-effective storage and rapid disaster recovery with NetApp

Manchester Grammar School Turns to NetApp Storage to Underpin Massive Growth Requirements

Manchester Grammar School, one of the UK’s largest independent day schools, faced a rapid IT expansion—growing from about 400 to 1,100 devices as computing and a junior school were introduced—leaving its legacy storage platform unable to cope. The school experienced inefficient, costly scaling, slow disk-to-tape backups and prolonged recovery times that threatened business continuity and compliance.

MGS partnered with LIMA to deploy NetApp FAS2552/FAS2520 systems with SnapMirror SAN-to-SAN replication to a disaster recovery site. The new platform delivered cost-effective, high-performance storage with simpler management, reclaimed 40% of disk capacity, enabled full backups twice daily (nearly 8TB backed up almost instantly), sped restores, freed the IT team for productive work, and strengthened recoverability and the school’s reputation.

Manchester Grammar School

Richard Wilcock

Head of Computer Services