Red Hat today announced the growing adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Network solutions by several leading higher education institutions, including Wake Forest University, the University of Washington and Vanderbilt University. These top-tier universities have made the switch to Red Hat to deliver affordable, high-performing solutions for mission-critical applications with trusted support, manageability and security.
Historically, IT staff within the academic market struggle to do more with less. Growth in enrollment, digital learning, more distributed mission-critical applications and more highly integrated network initiatives have increased the need for operating system reliability, simplicity and quality, while reducing cost pressures. Red Hat Enterprise Linux solutions contribute low-cost, high-performing operating software on commodity hardware, providing numerous Red Hat technical support options and creating a variety of enterprise management solutions. Red Hat enables academic institutions to save additional money through academic-priced subscriptions, utilize less expensive hardware requirements and have fewer refresh purchases. These institutions also save administrative and maintenance time by centrally managing the enterprise across numerous departments and campuses through Red Hat Network solutions.
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
The Wake Forest Information Systems Department is committed to continuous improvement in the services they provide to students, faculty and staff. So when they needed to build a high-performance computing cluster and increase performance in mission-critical applications, Wake Forest turned to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Network Satellite Server to get the job done. Wake Forest also required a highly reliable operating environment to power Program Link, the largest central administrative computing conversion in the university's history. Program Link is the cornerstone of the University's initiative for a wholly integrated digital campus, so it was imperative that Wake Forest find an operating system that integrated cleanly with Oracle's total product line.
"The University has an extensive collection of computing facilities that serve both academic and business needs," said Jay Dominick, Assistant Vice President for Information Systems and Chief Information Officer, Wake Forest University. "Red Hat has played a critical role in the upgrade of our information infrastructure from proprietary Unix-based servers to open source-based computing and the deployment of a cluster-based supercomputing facility. It has also allowed us to standardize our computing support - both scientific and business computing - around one operating system. The advantages for us in terms of support, availability and disaster recovery are substantial."
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
For the University of Washington, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has provided the optimal hardware and software performance it demands to reinforce its status as one of the most progressive research institutions in the nation. Red Hat Enterprise Linux helped the University of Washington's Center for Computational Biomechanics integrate high-performance computing and multi-host access, ensuring that research goals are now met regardless of classroom demands and time constraints. The system has demonstrated highly scalable performance increases, bridging the typically contradictory objectives of cutting-edge research and classroom-style student instruction. An automotive crash model that once took 12 hours in the Center for Computational Biomechanics can now be completed in roughly an hour, enabling students to focus more attention on classroom instruction. High-performance results of this nature have fostered the University of Washington's reputation as an international leader across disciplines.
"We have one overarching mission within the Center for Computational Biomechanics at the University of Washington: to consistently produce results which advance human health and top-quality students armed with the latest tools for modeling the human body," said David J. Nuckley, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor in the University of Washington's Department of Mechanical Engineering. "Our students were isolated and stretching themselves and their individual workstations thin, creating a difficult environment for learning and discovery. The Center environment facilitates group instruction in a powerful lab which doubles as their research domain. The implementation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux gives our students the luxury of high performance computing, which, through the full integration of multi-host access, drastically cuts down on stress levels and saves the center time, money and resources while facilitating research discoveries."
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
Historically an HP-UX and HP3000 campus, Vanderbilt University's MIS department relied heavily on Unix and Oracle for its computing environment. Beginning in 2002, however, it became evident that their HP-UX systems were reaching the end of life in terms of maintenance and performance. The University's needs for data storage alone were increasing by 1,000 percent each year, and the HP mainframe environment was not keeping pace. A central MIS staff supports the university, which includes a large medical center and several hospitals, making high levels of performance and reliability critical to their continued leadership and long term success. The University weighed two potential solutions for replacing their aging infrastructure: a newer HP-UX solution and an equivalent 32-bit platform. The proposal for an Intel and Linux solution came in at more than 60 percent less, making the migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux the clear choice. Vanderbilt University now has over 30 Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers supporting the University's finance and human resources applications, student applications, alumni development infrastructure and the Medical Center, which sees more than one million patients per year.
"The cost advantages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Academic Editions with Red Hat Network are just too attractive to turn down," said Kevin McDonald, Program Manager for System Administration, Vanderbilt University. "It's a huge bargain, and when we considered the added benefits of Red Hat's support assistance with patching, security and the RHN GUI console, we felt we had everything to gain and very little to lose. Ultimately it's about performance and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The performance is definitely there with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We saw lower TCO in three areas: initial acquisition of hardware, software purchasing which is usually priced according to platform and system administration because our skills easily transferred. And with Red Hat's Academic offering, we see a big future for Linux at Vanderbilt."
"Wake Forest, Vanderbilt University and the University of Washington are examples of how the academic market is migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux to save money, time and resources while improving performance, stability, uptime and security," said Paul Smith, Vice President of Government Sales Operations, Red Hat. "In the last year, we experienced immense growth from the academic market as our Red Hat Enterprise Linux and open source technologies rapidly expand into the academic mainstream, from hosting mission-critical applications, to high performance and digital computing."
To learn more about Red Hat Global Education Solutions, call 1-866-273-3428 x45014 or visit http://www.redhat.com/solutions/education/.