Case Study: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid scales VDI to support 40,000 students with NetApp

UPM deploys its VDI to optimize teaching and workstations

The Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), a top-100 engineering and technology university, needed to scale teaching and workstation access so administrators, faculty and more than 40,000 students could work remotely. Accelerated by the pandemic, the challenge was to amplify resources and deliver thousands of desktops per hour with zero tolerance for failures—demanding high reliability, support and tight coordination across all components.

UPM launched escritorioUPM, a VDI service built with NetApp storage (2 AFF A800), 96 Lenovo SD530 servers, Mellanox networking, Proxmox hypervisor and UDS Enterprise orchestration, alongside Virtual Cable and Lanmedia. The deployment delivered thousands of virtual workstations, simplified image and software management, enabled students to access desktops anywhere, and let some centers consider replacing physical labs—moving the university from a few dozen devices to thousands of virtual desktops.

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Víctor Robles

Vice Rector of Strategy and Digital Transformation