CASE STUDY
clear sequence of workloads, defined change windows and close coordination between the hosting infrastructure team, application teams and Nutanix.
Our existing high availability architecture was critical. For many services, we could migrate passive nodes first, fail services across without user impact and then move the remaining nodes. This allowed much of the work to be completed during business hours while maintaining service continuity.
Nutanix Move also played an important role by simplifying workload migration and providing clear visibility of progress and exceptions. Combined with disciplined planning, strong technical ownership and rapid issue resolution, this enabled us to complete the migration within approximately four months, with no disruption to university’ s operations.
What made the 52 % reduction in infrastructure footprint possible and where has that shown up most clearly day to day?
The 52 % reduction was achieved through workload right-sizing, platform consolidation and the move to a hyperconverged architecture.
Ahead of the migration, UniSQ reviewed virtual machine allocations and reduced areas of overprovisioning, supported by the visibility and recommendations provided through Nutanix Move.
The new architecture also allowed us to consolidate compute and storage, reduce the number of hosts and retire several standalone storage arrays. Day to day, this has resulted in a simpler environment, lower power and cooling requirements and reduced maintenance overhead.
The outcome is not only a smaller physical footprint, but a more efficient and sustainable infrastructure platform for UniSQ.
What does the shift from reactive, manual capacity management to a more proactive model look like in practice for your team now?
The shift is about giving UniSQ earlier and clearer visibility of capacity, utilisation and emerging constraints across the environment.
Rather than relying on periodic manual reviews or responding once capacity becomes an issue, the team can now identify underused resources, forecast demand and make informed decisions before performance or availability is affected.
This means less time reacting to immediate capacity pressures and more time optimising the platform, planning for the needs of UniSQ’ s core systems and aligning future infrastructure investment with operational priorities.
How has the new platform changed reliability or performance for students and staff who are not on a physical campus and what benefits have they seen from using an integrated platform?
Many of UniSQ’ s most critical teaching, learning, research and administrative systems are hosted and managed
We had an opportunity to transform how UniSQ delivers and manages its core infrastructure while reducing risk, improving value and creating a stronger foundation for future growth.
internally, so the resilience and availability of our infrastructure are fundamental to university operations.
The Nutanix platform has strengthened the foundation supporting these systems by improving resilience across our data centres, simplifying failover and recovery and giving the team clearer visibility of platform health. This allows us to undertake maintenance and respond to infrastructure events with greater confidence and less risk of disruption.
For students and staff, including those accessing systems or services online, the benefit is consistent and reliable access to the core systems they depend on. The platform provides a stronger and more stable foundation for UniSQ’ s key services, alongside the SaaS platforms already in use.
How does the Nutanix platform specifically set you up for the next phase of development and what’ s first on the agenda?
Nutanix provides UniSQ with a more scalable, resilient and integrated foundation for our future technology requirements. By simplifying the underlying architecture and improving visibility across compute, storage and workload performance, we are better positioned to respond to changing demand without continually adding cost or complexity.
Our immediate priority is to consolidate the benefits of the migration through further workload optimisation, increased automation and the continued integration of the platform into our infrastructure lifecycle and Disaster Recovery planning.
We are currently testing Nutanix Flow to introduce effective microsegmentation into the network layer to improve our cybersecurity stance and reduce the complexity of our host-based firewall management.
The next area we want to explore is databases. UniSQ operates a significant database environment and we see an opportunity to examine how the Nutanix platform could simplify database management, improve resilience and reduce the operational overhead associated with supporting those workloads. More broadly, the platform gives us greater flexibility to support the evolving needs of teaching, research and administration while ensuring future investment remains deliberate, sustainable and aligned with UniSQ’ s priorities. •
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