Case Study: Milwaukee Area Technical College achieves hands-on VMware storage training with Synology Inc.'s RS3412RPxs

Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) - Customer Case Study

Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) needed real storage hardware to teach VMware vSphere 5 storage concepts—students previously only had a virtual SAN appliance and whiteboard explanations. To give learners hands‑on experience with SAN/RAID and hypervisor storage, MATC selected Synology Inc.’s RS3412RPxs RackStation for its VMware networking program.

Synology Inc. supplied the RS3412RPxs (mounted on a mobile cart with two VMware hosts and vCenter), providing NFS and iSCSI connectivity, 4 gigabit NICs with MPIO, and hot‑swap RAID demonstrations. The physical lab transformed instruction—students watched an actual drive pulled without data loss, practiced RAID/setup, troubleshooting and performance testing, and showed markedly higher engagement and practical skills; MATC even plans two new Storage and Cloud classes built around Synology technology.

Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC)

Brian Kirsch

Instructor