Executive Summary
Customer: Institute of Business Administration
Industry: Education
Location: Pakistan
Challenges
With the growing need for high-performance computing resources to support PhD research and AI-focused courses, IBA requires a scalable, efficient, and cost-effective solution to empower students and researchers with robust computational power. Traditional infrastructure approaches were not sufficient to handle the intensive workloads associated with AI model training, data analytics, and research simulations.
Sangfor Solution
IBA had already been successfully using Sangfor HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure) and Sangfor VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) to streamline IT operations, improve resource utilization, and provide a secure, flexible virtual environment for students and faculty. Building on this success, IBA decided to expand its collaboration with Sangfor by implementing a High-Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure.
- aServer-2305 X 4
- HCI for 8 Sockets
- NVIDIA-GPU-A40 x 4
Customer Background
The Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi; is a public university in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. IBA is owned by the Government of Sindh. Established initially as a business school, the IBA has expanded to include programs in Computer Science, Social Sciences, and more.
As a leading educational institution renowned for its academic excellence and technological innovation, IBA has been leveraging Sangfor's advanced IT infrastructure solutions to drive digital transformation and enhance learning experiences.
Challenges
Traditional infrastructure approaches were not sufficient to handle the intensive workloads associated with AI model training, data analytics, and research simulations.
Key challenges included:
- Lack of computational resources for accommodating the application and user requirements.
- Mandatory requirement of university management for accommodating the AI based courses.
- Robust solution to accommodate the rapidly changing requirements as requirements vary from student to student or subject to subject.
Sangfor Solutions
The HPC environment, powered by Sangfor's cutting-edge technology, is designed to deliver optimized computing performance for AI, data science, and research-driven workloads. This upgrade aims to empower PhD scholars and AI students with seamless access to powerful computational resources without compromising manageability or cost efficiency.
Why Sangfor
- Enhanced Research Capability: Enables complex simulations, AI model training, and data-intensive computations.
- Scalability: Simplified expansion of compute and storage resources to meet future academic and research demands.
- Operational Efficiency: Unified management under Sangfor HCI ensures simplified maintenance and improved uptime.
- Empowered Learning: Provides a stable, high-performance environment for students pursuing AI, ML, and data analytics courses.
Through Sangfor's integrated solutions, IBA is setting a new benchmark for technology-enabled education and research excellence. The new HPC infrastructure not only supports advanced academic projects but also reinforces IBA's commitment to fostering innovation and preparing students for the evolving digital era.
On behalf of the University's IT Department, I would like to extend our sincere appreciation for the successful deployment of the Sangfor High Compute Cluster at our campus. This implementation marks a significant technological milestone for our institution. The Sangfor High Compute Cluster has greatly enhanced our computational capabilities, enabling us to efficiently meet the demanding requirements of AI-based applications and research workloads.
With this state-of-the-art infrastructure in place, we are now fully equipped to support and deliver advanced AI-based courses, empowering our students and faculty to engage in high-performance computing, deep learning model training, and data-intensive research. The cluster has already demonstrated remarkable stability and performance, ensuring a reliable environment for innovation and academic excellence.
We truly appreciate Sangfor's professional approach, technical expertise, and continuous support throughout this project. This collaboration has not only resolved our earlier performance limitations but has also positioned the University at the forefront of AI education and research capabilities.
Syed Mohammad Wajeeh Zaidi Associate Registrar ICT, IBA
The partnership between IBA and Sangfor continues to grow, driven by a shared vision of innovation, efficiency, and excellence. With the addition of Sangfor HPC, IBA stands at the forefront of academic institutions embracing cutting-edge technology to power the next generation of researchers and AI professionals.
