Case Study: Cleveland State Community College achieves 40% VDI cost savings and faster‑than‑PC user experience with Nutanix

Cleveland State Community College Saves 40% on VDI Investment with Nutanix – And User Experience is Faster than PCs

Cleveland State Community College, a public institution serving about 3,500 regular and 1,500 non-credit students in Tennessee, faced a failing VDI pilot that was slower than physical desktops, hard to manage and impossible to scale within tight space, power and staffing constraints—especially in a high-use mathematics lab where hardware maintenance consumed major staff time. The IT team needed a dense, easy-to-manage VDI platform that would cost no more than existing PCs per desktop.

They deployed a 3-node Nutanix NX‑3350 running VMware ESXi and Horizon View, a 2U solution that supports 200 virtual desktops. The Nutanix-based VDI cost about $170,000—40% less than competing server+SAN alternatives and slightly less per client than physical PCs—while delivering faster user performance, dramatically simpler management, reduced maintenance overhead, and plans to expand the cluster and improve disaster recovery.

Cleveland State Community

Chris Mowery

Director of Information Technology, Cleveland State Community College