Reducing costs, improving service, and extending the life of computers with solid-state drives

Due to compliance concerns, during the summer of 2011 the University of Rochester began requiring that all individuals authenticate in order to use the network. Benchmarking with other institutions indicated that Windows 7 took two to three minutes from the time someone logged on to the point the machine was fully responsive and a browser could be used. We had optimized the machines such that the time had been reduced to about a minute and a half, but students complained about how long the logon process took. At the same time, budget constraints forced extending the three-year replacement cycle for computers, and the older machines were both slower and less reliable, usually due to hard drive failures. Student leaders indicated that they needed strategically placed computers, referred to as 'kiosks', to be optimized for logon time so that students could have immediate access to email and the web between classes. They would also accept a reduced suite of applications on kiosks if it meant faster logon times. There are less than twenty kiosks across campus, compared to more than 550 public machines total. Kiosks are ideal for evaluating experimental software or hardware, as changes made on them would not affect classes or other production uses. We installed solid state drives in kiosks with a minimal suite of applications. The time from logon to having a fully functional browser dropped to fifteen seconds, and the performance of our oldest PCs exceeded a new PC with a regular hard drive. The lifespan of the PCs could potentially be extended by years. Feedback has been so positive that we are now evaluating switching all machines to solid state technology. This paper will discuss the results of our performance testing of solid state drives, including the performance gains in all types of applications, and the costs involved; both in implementing solid state drives on already deployed PCs, and avoided due to not having to replace PCs as often.