December 25, 2009 Original pdf
Christian College Achieves PC Deployment in a Snap"I’m very impressed with Acronis Snap Deploy for its simple installation, ease-of-use and powerful features. It saves our IT team countless hours a week in deploying classroom and staff computers." - Ashley Walters, Director of IT, Christian College IntroductionLocated in the Geelong region of Victoria, Christian College is a K-12 school focused on quality education and exceptional student values. It has a current enrolment of around 1,800 students and 240 administration and teaching staff across five campus locations. Christian College has always invested in the school’s IT system, aiming to provide students with high-quality classes and IT facilities. They recently bought 1,000 new workstations as the old ones were getting more and more unreliable. The IT team was required to set up all the machines in a short time so the students and teaching staff would have new computers to use in the new semester. Ashley Walters, Director of IT at Christian College explained that it is a long and painful process to build up 1,000 computers, install all the necessary software as required by the teaching staff, and join each workstation to the domain. "For a team of five technicians including myself, the task was almost unmanageable in that timeframe. Plus daily maintenance jobs and other projects, we just couldn’t afford the time," said Ashley. Solution in a SnapTo solve the issue, Ashley and his team looked at a few imaging solutions, such as Windows deployment services, Ghost and some Linux-based solutions. None of them were easy to set up, while Acronis Snap Deploy 3 impressed them immediately with its ease-of-use and affordability. "The biggest challenge for us was the setup. We were facing a strict deadline for the deployment. All we needed was a solution that was simple to install and could achieve PC deployment on the network quickly. Acronis Snap Deploy does exactly what we wanted, and it is very well priced." As a result, Christian College purchased 1,000 Acronis Snap Deploy 3 Workstation and Acronis Universal Deploy licences, an add-on component that allows the school to deploy standard images to dissimilar hardware. Top of the ClassIt only took Ashley and his team three days to install the Acronis solution and deploy the master image to the 400 student desktop computers and another three days to image all the staff and student laptops on the network. "We were amazed at the simplicity of the installation process," recalled Ashley. "The graphical user interface is extremely easy to use. The staff training was completed in one hour, and none of my staff has returned with issues since the day we deployed the solution." With Acronis Snap Deploy 3, Christian College is able to create images of the standard configuration of the master PCs, including the operating system, settings and applications. Stored in a central location on the network, the images can be deployed to multiple workstations simultaneously, which dramatically cuts down the time required for a manual reinstall or initial set up. "Acronis is ideal for bare metal installations. It saves us at least four hours per week in deploying classroom and staff computers and now we can do more strategic planning and focus more on other important projects. It’s a better use of everyone’s time," noted Ashley. The pre-deployment feature gives Christian College the ability to easily configure system settings such as networking settings, domain/workgroup settings, computer name, user name, and apply them to the image before deployment. Ashley’s team can also schedule to distribute the master image at a specific point in time in advance. "Pre-deployment and scheduled deployment features increase the flexibility and productivity of the deployment plan. Once set, the process is automated and requires very little intervention from our technicians," added Ashley. "Acronis Universal Deploy also gives us peace of mind by eliminating the hardware constraints. No need to have identical hardware across the entire network." Christian College also uses Acronis to take images of the older workstations. When breakdowns happen, the images can be used as basic backups on the new machines. ConclusionHaving been extremely satisfied with the Acronis solution, the IT team plans to purchase more Acronis Snap Deploy licences when the school expands the network computers. They are also considering the Acronis Backup & Recovery solution for server protections. "Acronis is ideal for bare metal installations. It saves us at least four hours per week in deploying classroom and staff computers and now we can do more strategic planning and focus more on other important projects. It’s a better use of everyone’s time," - Ashley Walters, Director of IT, Christian College About Acronis®Acronis Inc. est le fournisseur leader de logiciels de gestion du stockage et de reprise d’activité après sinistre. Sa technologie d’image disque et de gestion brevetée permet aux entreprises et aux particuliers de faire migrer, de gérer et de maintenir leurs actifs numériques dans des environnements physiques et virtuels. Avec les logiciels de sauvegarde, de restauration, de consolidation des serveurs et de virtualisation Acronis, les utilisateurs peuvent protéger leurs données numériques, maintenir la continuité de leur activité et réduire les interruptions d’activité en environnements informatiques. Les logiciels Acronis sont vendus dans plus de 180 pays et disponibles en 13 langues. | 
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