Case Study: Southeastern Louisiana University achieves 6× faster student logins and 30% less IT support time with NetApp EF-Series all‑flash storage

Ready for the Future of Academic Computing

Southeastern Louisiana University, serving over 14,000 students, needed to scale a virtual desktop infrastructure to improve student and faculty computing but found its legacy SAN unable to handle growth from about 100 to 800 virtual desktops. As performance degraded, login times ballooned—sometimes up to ten minutes—cutting into lab time and challenging a tight IT budget.

Working with partner CMA Technology Solutions, the university deployed a NetApp EF560 all-flash array in a Fibre Channel SAN in under a day, achieving roughly a tenfold increase in IOPS and microsecond response times. The result: sixfold faster logins (about 15–20 seconds), application loads like Visual Studio reduced to ~15 seconds, IT client-support time down more than 30%, and significant space, power, and scaling efficiencies for future VDI growth.

Southeastern Louisiana University

Ray DeJean

Client Connectivity Leader