The University of Salford

With seven schools, 20,000 students and 2,500 staff, the University of Salford is widely regarded as one of the UK’s leading higher education institutions.

The University’s ambitious plans to redevelop its existing campus, coupled with its move to join the BBC and ITV at MediaCityUK, has prompted a substantial investment in the development of its IT infrastructure. 

With availability absolutely critical for all of its IT equipment, the University required world-class redundant and 3 phase power protection and, vitally, a trusted partner to work with other contractors and suppliers to design, supply and implement support solutions to meet both current and expected future needs. 

“We went through a period of low investment in IT - the replacement cycles were very high and we ended up with 290 servers in the data centre with another 70 under people’s desks in schools and other facilities. Now we have a bit of budget to spend, we have virtualised all of them and there is further rationalisation of applications. The second data centre is a business continuity thing - the new one will be the main facility with plenty of space for expansion and the old one used for disaster recovery.” 

Derek Drury, The University of Salford CIO

Datacentre UK was selected by the University of Salford to provide a number of APC PX Symmetra UPS solutions for various data centres located across the campus. Highly manageable, the Symmetra PX features self-diagnostic capabilities and standardised modules, which mitigate the risk of human error resulting in increased overall data centre reliability. The solution was selected thanks to its ability to scale power and runtime as demand grows or as higher levels of availability are required.