Biography
Matthew is the Head of Networks, Infrastructure and Telephony at Loughborough University. He has been a member of staff at the University since 1999, and during that time has worked in numerous areas of IT management and development including many collaborations with other academic institutions, Janet, Jisc and UCISA. Leading four teams of IT professionals, Matthew works with 14 colleagues who are a mixture of direct and in-direct reports in his section. Loughborough is a large campus based, research-intensive University with a significant network at over 26,000 connections across a 437-acre site. The University has a dual resilient and diverse 10Gb connection to the Janet network and a 40Gb backbone, providing the essential connectivity for: teaching, learning and research. Currently Matthew is also the Vice-Chair of the UCISA Networking Group, Head of ESISS and a Janet Contracted Trainer. He has spoken at many international conferences on various information technology topics, these: presentations, papers, research and lectures are available at http://escarpment.net/.
Abstract
Refreshing your entire network
In the autumn of 2010, Loughborough University embarked on a programme to fresh four key areas of infrastructure: Data Centre, Networking, Unified Communications and VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). This is a walk through the challenges of refreshing a large networking infrastructure across a 437 acre campus; with over 1,000 devices to replace and change from the regular yearly refresh cycle, it was an interesting period. The session will discuss the engagement with stakeholders within the University, physical infrastructure challenges, managing vendors and commercial partners. January 2013 marked the conclusion of the upgrade to the new infrastructure, leaving the team to concentrate on projects which were displaced during the intensive upgrade programme. If you are considering a full refresh of your infrastructure; there will hopefully be some learning points to take away and a opportunity to ask questions at the end of the session.
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