NIIT has strategic partnership with various technology companies such as
Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, etc. Under these partnerships, NIIT offers
higher end state of art curriculum to working professionals and career aspirants
in IT. NIIT offers the use of hardware and software resources to ensure
participants have real time hands on experience. To provide hands on experience
to all of its students, espcially in networking courses, a networking
infrastructure was required. However deploying identical infrastructure across
all NIIT Education Centers was neither cost effective nor green, as it would
result in underutilization of network infrastructure as well as create
management over head. To address the situation NIIT decided to set up a Virtual
Lab.
QWhat were the key challenges you faced in this project ?
QPlease tell us about the benefits NIIT has drieved from this project We had rolled out a WAN 2 years back, connecting all our education |
This virtual lab has been co-hosted at Reliance Communication
Infrastructure's Data Center in Mumbai. NIIT students can remotely access the
lab using Internet connection. One point worth mentioning here is that no
virtualization was used in this lab. A complete test lab has been set up at
Reliance data center and NIIT centers to access them remotely on time sharing
basis. Also the lab has been built using Cisco gear and NIIT claims that the
setup done under the project will be life time. However, it will undergo regular
changes as and when Cisco updates the technologies.
Note: 1. Server emit Co2 @ 8 tonnes per annum 2. Routers emit Co2 @ 20 tonnes per annum 3. Ethernet switches emit Co2 @ 5 tonnes per annum |
While Virtual Lab has helped in reducing the number of deployments by having
centralized infrastructure, it also contributes to Green IT by reducing the CO2
emission that would have got generated due to the massive deployment at
education centers. This was the precise reason why jury decided to put this
project in Green IT category.
Company Scenario |
Before Deployment |
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After Deployment |
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During the implementation, NIIT faced challenges like change in deployment
and training methodology from localized to centralized. Other big challenge was
time sharing between various NIIT centers for the use of Virtual Lab. Also as
soon as time for a hands on lab is up, routers and other infrastructure are
automatically set to default settings with help of scripts created by NIIT.
Currently NIIT has completed Cisco CCNA Module setup i.e CCNA students are
now using this Virtual Lab gear to practice their lab exercises as part of the
CCNA training. NIIT claims that it has trained over 6000 students through this
Virtual Lab.
Total cost of implementation of this project was Rs. 1.30 Crores and NIIT
expects the returns of Rs 7.7 Crores over next 1.5 years.