Educational Institution

Desktop Software Updates for 6500 PCs

Background

The client is an ambitious institution of higher education. Its vibrant learning and working community and particularly its scale is ideal for students who are keen to develop their theoretical knowledge as well as their practical skills. Offering competence-based learning, the univeristy is professionally involved both with the student, the market and society as a whole.

Client Profile

Our client:
  • One of the largest universities in Europe, with more than 6500 PCs in sixteen different locations scattered over the campus. 
  • They had a requirement to provide software updates of up to 3.5GB to all these PCs on a regular basis from a centralized location.
  • Limited human resources to implement software updates.
  • Typically required nearly a week to deploy large software updates.
  • Required at least 24 distribution servers for deployment.
Problem

The problems facing them:
  • Providing a centralized location for updating software.
  • Moving 20TB data out of the datacenter efficiently and reliably.
  • No control over PCs being switched on and off during the update process.
  • Reducing the number of interactions on site in the various locations.
  • Providing a solution that can interoperate with existing management tools.
  • Limited bandwidth on the network to move more than 20TB fast and efficiently on the WAN without interruptions and managing network connectivity issues.
Solution

The solution to these challenges was:
  • Deployed a predecessor that resulted in the development of BruteOS.
Results

Our solution resulted in:
  • Successfully update 6500 PCs in less than four hours. 
  • Reduce number of distribution servers required from 24 to only 2.
  • Successfully moved 20TB of data out of the datacenter.
  • Proved successful install over the WAN of the without the requirement of distribution servers.
  • Retained centralized management and release of software updates.
  • Proved successful unattended update and install of software.
  • No impact on switching PCs off or on during install of updates.
  • No vendor or product dependency.