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CaseStudyFeatureText1: The high achieving Stockport based secondary school on a mission to eliminate unscheduled network downtime.

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CaseStudy1: State of the art infrastructure for Priestnall School

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Contact: Daley Robinson

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The regiments of the Household Cavalry (HCav) and Royal Armoured Corps (RAC) are descendants of the famous Cavalry Regiments who rode into battle on horseback as heavy or light horsemen; and of the Royal Tank Regiment who manned the first tanks during the Great War.

The demonstrably multi-tasking RAC soldier and his exceptional battle-proven equipment are a winning combination and make for modern soldiering at its most exciting.

Historically, for 10 years Ergo has supplied end-user device hardware to both RAC and Armoured Infantry (AI). High performance Ergo desktops and laptops enable Computer Based Training (CBT) at both training schools and field army units – all delivered with security and stability of product range as standard.

The Courseware Advisory and Development Team (CADT) at the Armour Centre says: “Ergo have always delivered effective equipment with excellent levels of support. We feel confident working with Ergo to deliver high quality IT equipment to both schools and unit training wings.”

The UK MoD has been undertaking a strategic change in IT based training, from low-level CBT to Simulation Synthetic Environment (SSE) training. A key driver to this transformation is efficiency savings surrounding live firing exercises and a desire to reduce costs in logistics, ammunition and subsistence. Balancing the movement of whole regiments with ongoing operational demands is a pressing demand and also presents a set of logistical challenges that are not easily overcome.

To assist in providing a solution to these challenges, Ergo built on the existing strong relationship with HQ Director Royal Armoured Corps (HQ DRAC) to conceptualise the Synthetic Training Development Facility (STDF) at the AFV Gunnery School, Lulworth. The vision was to create a platform to demonstrate gaming based SSE applications that could deliver simulated live-fire training for both “Technical Gunnery” and low-level tactical training in a classroom environment.

CADT continue: “We want to simulate Troop / Platoon level tactical scenarios in the classroom, as reductions in live training offer a limited opportunity to practice these skills using armoured vehicles. In addition, the ability of the trainer to practice technical gunnery as an integral part of such tactical scenarios, gives an enhanced training capability that greatly exceeds that of the current Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (CATT), albeit on a smaller scale.”

Following a successful demonstration of the capability at Lulworth, HQ DRAC wish to upgrade all existing CBT classrooms throughout the RAC and AI to give units this capability within their own barracks. As part of the upgrade planning, HQ DRAC have identified a concern over the physical security of the “high end” PCs themselves. Consequently, Ergo have engineered a highly innovative and practical solution to this problem. This is the “secure desk” into which the elements of the PC are fixed. In addition, the computer monitor and ancillaries may remain connected, but can be folded away, to allow use of the classroom and desks for conventional instruction. Also, by the addition of a bracket to mount “tactile” turret controls and switch boxes, the desk becomes a Crew Simulation Trainer (CST). This offers best-of-breed Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware that can be reconfigured to suit different vehicle training requirements.

CADT add: “Currently the STDF is used to demonstrate crew integration exercises on multiple platforms using the VBS2 serious game. However, work is being done to accurately replicate the turret functionality of Challenger 2, to enable technical gunnery using VBS2. The first practical application of this will be a synthetic Annual Crew Test (Revised) (ACT(R)) for CR2 crews, incorporating “Judgemental” serials. It is the flexibility to offer a wide range of both gunnery and tactical training, on multiple platforms, at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods that makes Ergo’s solution so compelling.”

Built from the ground up to be optimised for VBS2 technology, the CST enables simulated training exercises that can offer cost savings of up to 75% when compared to the equivalent live firing exercise.

CADT conclude: “What Ergo’s solution means in practice is that Troops and Platoons can practice elementary tactical manoeuvres at their own pace, in a classroom environment, thus being best prepared to get maximum benefit from live training, if and when available. They can incorporate the correct techniques of shooting into their tactical training and also rehearse “mission specific” scenarios prior to deployment. This represents a huge increase in capability at a relatively low cost”.

“We chose Ergo because of their proven ability on the CBT project. In STDF, they have provided a practical solution that answered our challenge to deliver increased capability and efficiency savings simultaneously. They represent excellent value for money and we have the utmost confidence in both their equipment and their support structure.”

 

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“We chose Ergo because of their proven ability on the CBT project. In STDF, they have provided a practical solution that answered our challenge to deliver increased capability and efficiency savings simultaneously. They represent excellent value for money and we have the utmost confidence in both their equipment and their support structure.”

CADT (Courseware Advisory Development Team) at the Armour Centre

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Key Benefits

• Efficiency savings surrounding live firing exercises
• Programme to reduce costs in logistics, ammunition and subsistence
• Ability to practice technical gunnery in tactical scenarios
• COTS hardware that can be easily reconfigured to suit other vehicles
• Enables Troops and Platoons to practice manoeuvres at their own pace

ErgoSitePageCategory: Defence

NewsPageStatus: None Archived

CaseStudyDocLink: >>Download PDF

Contact: Daley Robinson

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Priestnall School has a local and national reputation for excellence and high levels of achievement.  Effective learning and attainment is at the heart of their philosophy, creating a climate which nurtures ability and develops strengths.  The school is rightly proud of its achievements - examination results at both Key Stage 3 and GCSE level are high and increasing year-on-year.

With proven improvements in attainment, the school’s Headmistress Jo Morgan realised the need to ensure that IT systems could keep up with the secondary school’s fast-moving aspirations.

For the past few years, the school had been running a well-known network and classroom management system from another company. The main issues surrounded the hardware, with old outdated servers presenting critical issues that significantly affected the teaching and learning experience.

Network Manager, Gary Pearson, explains: “We were suffering from massive hardware problems.  If any of our servers developed a fault, we could be without mission critical services such as Email or print servers for 2 or 3 days whilst we sourced the relevant parts and we went through a total of 27 HDDs on one server alone in 3 years.  Managing the storage space was a weekly balancing act that would see us manually clearing out log files on the server. It was madness.”

The school wanted to move on a network architecture that would reflect the forward-thinking attitude of the school and its pupils. They wanted a solution that was state of the art - something that no other school in authority had.

Becta ICT Infrastructure Services Framework

Once the decision had been made to rip out the poor performing network, the ICT team at Priestnall began to assess the Becta website for suitable partners to help deliver their vision of the future. 6 Becta accredited suppliers were invited to tender for the work, including Ergo.

Iain Faulkner, Assistant Network Manager, says “I’d heard glowing reports from a friend at another school who had used Ergo’s infrastructure service in the past.”

Once the tender responses had been received, it became clear that Ergo offered the best overall value proposition.

Gary continues: “Ergo were chosen because in addition to offering one of the lowest prices – everything was done in-house. The account management, the building of the PCs, the infrastructure consultancy - Ergo did it all under one roof.

“Other suppliers on the shortlist were sub-contracting out the infrastructure part and we were keen to have a single point of contact for the entire project.”

Virtualised reality

As a self-fulfilling ICT department that takes pride in managing their own network and IT estate, Priestnall School wanted to install a vanilla Windows network. Although this was clearly set out in the invitation to tender, other suppliers still tried to force their network management solution onto the school at every opportunity. 

Driving the entire solution from the outset was a fully virtualised VMware ESXi infrastructure. Comprising of 3 physical servers, the school now has 15 virtual servers to take forward their learning-critical ICT services.

Given the previous issue of network downtime affecting operations at Priestnall, network redundancy was central to ensuring that systems at the school are always highly available.

Gary says: “Ergo’s solution means that if hardware does fail, we can failover to another server until other one is brought back online. We can get back up and running in a matter of minutes as opposed to days. The fact is though, since Ergo installed our new network we haven’t had to failover at all. We have suffered no unscheduled downtime.”

Shared storage delivering true learning benefits

Shared Storage was another key component of Ergo’s next generation infrastructure solution. 2 Hitachi SMS100 SANs were deployed – one to supplement the virtualisation and another for user data storage.

This has resulted in marked efficiency improvements to the way that curriculum learning tools are delivered. For example, the Science department previously had a very manual process for video-based learning tools. A teacher would have to book out a DVD, meaning that only one teacher could use a particular video at any one time. With the new SAN configuration videos are stored electronically and streamed on-demand direct to the teacher’s device – giving a greater flexibility in the way teaching materials are used in the classroom.

Completed over a 2 week period in the summer holidays, the overall implementation went very smoothly with a slight compatibility issue between the oversized server cabinet and a narrow doorframe proving the only temporary obstacle.

Desktop of the class

As part of the summer project, Ergo also equipped the school with 370 Ergo MiniPC desktops offering high performance and one of the lowest warranty return rates in the industry.

Iain explains: “Our previous desktops from another manufacturer were always being repaired for something. The Ergo Desktop PCs have proved much more resilient against the testing day-to-day usage of a secondary school. Out of 370 machines, only a handful have had any problem in 8 months.”

Why Ergo?

Gary and Iain conclude: “We’ve already recommended Ergo’s infrastructure services to several schools. They have an honest approach and really take onboard what it is you’re trying to achieve. Ergo took the time to understand where we wanted to take teaching and learning at Priestnall School then looked at a solution to help meet our specific requirements.

“Other suppliers were obsessed with trying to install an infrastructure that was right for their needs, not ours. Ergo offered us a way forward that will future proof our network for some years to come.”

 

CaseStudyIntroContent:

“Ergo’s solution means that if hardware does fail, we can failover to another server until other one is brought back online. We can get back up and running in a matter of minutes as opposed to days. The fact is though, since Ergo installed our new network we haven’t had to failover at all. We have suffered no unscheduled downtime.”

Gary Pearson
Network Manager, Priestnall School

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Key Benefits

• Highly available infrastructure with network resilience and redundancy as standard
• Dedicated virtual servers for each learning-critical service
• Shared storage driving changes to how teaching tools are delivered to the classroom
• Robust Ergo Desktop PCs that have greatly improved reliability of end-user devices

ErgoSitePageCategory: Secondary Schools

NewsPageStatus: Feature

CaseStudyDocLink: >>Download PDF