Lenovo collaborates with schools: aiming for the future

Lenovo collaborates with schools to transfer to high school students the skills to fit into companies of the future. The Higher Institute Carlo Emilio Gadda created a virtual desktop infrastructure based on VMware Horizon and the appliance Lenovo ThinkAgile VX high performance. By doing so, students can train themselves on design technologies state-of-the-art computer-assisted accessible both at school and at home. Let’s find out all the details.

Lenovo works with high schools

As part of a process of constant investments in innovative learning tools for their students, IIS CE Gadda is developing a new laboratory for advanced computer science courses. Thanks to the combination of technologies such as CAD, CNC e robotics with augmented reality solutions, the goal is prepare students for new research challenges he was born in work.

Realizing this vision presented some complex challenges for IIS CE Gadda, particularly caused by the lockdown locali and from pandemic of COVID-19. However, despite the problems, student enrollments have increased from year to year. It was therefore essential for the school to manage the new scenario effectively without increasing the impact on existing laboratories.

Margherita RabagliaDean of IIS CE Gadda, explains:

In the past, our technical staff and faculty had to manually prepare laptops and workstations by installing and configuring the required software. In addition to requiring a significant amount of time, we quickly realized that this approach was not feasible for distance learning. Some of our students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and do not have a computer at home that is powerful enough to carry out the activities planned for each lesson.

To solve the challenge, IIS CE Gadda sought to support students and teachers through a faster access to digital learning resources. The goal was to create a new one virtual desktop infrastructure able to allow students to access IT resources high performance from any laptop or desktop with an Internet connection; at the same time they want to help teachers reduce the time needed to set up new lessons e activities.

Why Lenovo and VMware?

After evaluating a number of leading IT vendors, IIS CE Gadda selected the Lenovo’s VDI solution e VMware. Based on two Lenovo ThinkAgile VX series high-performance appliances equipped with NVIDIA T4 GPUs, the new VDI infrastructure is enabled by VMware vSphere, VMware vSAN e VMware Horizonwith NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation to enable GPU acceleration for the most demanding use cases in the enterprise.

To allow access for both students and teachers, theagency has enabled a high availability configuration with a two-node Lenovo ThinkAgile VX hyperconverged infrastructure solution.

With the support of Lenovo Professional ServicesIIS CE Gadda has adapted to its needs, implemented and configured the new VDI solution. Today, the institute has reconfigured the 50 workstation existing to serve as thin clients, transforming legacy machines into high-performance IT platforms.

The VDI solution allows you to ensure that students operating remotely are not bound by hardware limitations of their own private desktops or laptops.