Case Study: University of Toronto achieves $9M in five-year cost savings and scalable VMware-ready storage with Nexenta

Handling Server Virtualization, Network Storage and Centralized Data Backup

The University of Toronto’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) team supports three campuses and over 80,000 students and needed to standardize and modernize mission‑critical storage for server virtualization, networked storage and centralized backups across a decentralized campus environment. An RFP sought a fast, reliable and cost‑effective SAN solution that could be used university‑wide.

EIS deployed a NexentaStor High‑Availability cluster on Cisco UCS hardware integrated with VMware vSphere, running on commodity servers. The environment now supports more than 1,000 VMs and about 3 PB of raw storage, delivering scalability, resilience and multi‑protocol support while significantly lowering TCO—saving the university an estimated $9 million over five years—and providing tight VMware integration and centralized data protection.

University of Toronto

Patrick J.A. Hopewell

Director, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions, University of Toronto