Customer Stories

How Dell Does IT: AIM (ETEC)

Dell wanted to simplify server provisioning for its Dell Enterprise Technology and Education Center (ETEC), so it deployed Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager (AIM) on 12 Dell PowerEdge servers.
Date : 6/1/2011
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I think AIM is a remarkable product. It definitely simplifies reconfiguring a network and server environment in ways that I previously thought were impossible. It really reduces the amount of time and effort that I have to put into managing our infrastructure environment, by 90 percent in many cases. I love it!

Tom Hall, Enterprise Technical Support Advisor, Dell, United States

Challenge
Dell wanted to simplify server provisioning for its Dell Enterprise Technology and Education Center (ETEC), a customer training base for Dell Education Services. Returning servers to a known good state following each training class was taking inordinate amounts of IT staff time and traditional imaging tools weren’t always reliable. Dell also wanted to reduce the amount of hardware and associated power and cooling resources required to run ETEC.
Solution
Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager (AIM) was deployed on 12 Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers to decouple workloads from the servers supporting them. Servers can now be reset in minutes and workloads can be saved for later use, increasing agility and reducing hardware requirements.
Benefits
• Projected 50 percent fewer servers required to run ETEC training classes
• Estimated 40-fold faster provisioning of server images (approximately 3 minutes vs. 2 hours)
• 2 hours a week of IT staff time saved after initial deployment
• Potential for hundreds of more hours saved annually (up to 90 percent reduction in infrastructure management time)
• Estimated 25–50 percent reduction in power requirements for servers managed by Dell AIM
• Approximately $40,000 cost avoidance on servers to support new classes
• Ability to manage resources and workloads remotely