Case Study: Oregon State University achieves scalable, high-performance VDI and faster logins with VMware Virtual SAN

Oregon State University Solves Critical Storage Pain Points with VMware Virtual SAN Solution

Oregon State University, a public research institution in Corvallis, Oregon, faced escalating strain on its computer lab infrastructure as student VDI usage surged. Local server storage couldn’t handle peak “boot storms,” manual rebalancing failed to prevent outages, recomposes took hours, and budget constraints ruled out a traditional SAN.

The IT team implemented VMware Virtual SAN with vSphere and Horizon View, clustering server disks and flash to create shared, software-defined storage. The quick, low-cost deployment eliminated boot storms, cut login times to under a minute, reduced recomposes from ~10 hours to under two, simplified management, and made capacity easy to scale by adding servers—delivering reliable VDI performance within budget.

Oregon State University

Alan Sprague

System Administrator