Jimma University: Smart Campus Guiding Intelligence Transformation of Education in Ethiopia

Jimma, located in south Ethiopia, is an ancient city famous for its coffee and Jimma University, a first-class university of Ethiopia. Founded in 1999, Jimma University is a leading public research university by the amalgamation of Jimma College of Agriculture and Jimma Institute of Health Sciences.

In recent years, with digital economy spreading worldwide, Ethiopia issued the “Strategy of Digital Ethiopia in 2025” to define the target and path of development in digitalization. Guided by this strategy, Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Ethiopia has also formulated “To Upgrade Higher Education, Vocational and Technical Education and Training: Action Plan of Digitalized Skills (2021-2030)” to promote education reform, improve education quality by information technology and better vitalize development of digital education.

With this trend, Jimma University actively embraces digital transformation, builds a solid foundation for its digital and intelligence transformation by cooperating with Huawei to focus on construction of ICT infrastructure such as network, storage, data center, etc. and introducing new products and new technologies such as modular data center and smart campus network.

Build Smart Campus Network, Improve Experience of Network Service

The campus network is the “Information Highway” to connect inside and outside of the campus and the important support for smart campus construction. In campus network construction, Jimma University hopes to build a highly reliable network with redundant design to make it easier to maintain and manage this network, with less operation cost and a longer service life for development of business in the next 10 years.

According to these requirements, Jimma University decides to choose Huawei Cloud Engine S12700E series of core switches and Cloud Engine S5735-L series of access switches to build a new smart campus network based on Wi-Fi 6; meanwhile, Jimma University also adopts Huawei iMaster NCE autopilot network management & control system to manage the network to perceive the network status in real time with predictive maintenance to making the network more simple, intelligent, open and secure.

Therefore, Jimma University has built an efficient, stable and reliable smart campus network to ensure normal operation of its business system and development of network in future, make it easy to manage and maintain with much less operation cost. In addition, by redundant design of the network, Jimma University also completely improves the network’s reliability and effectively prevents any interruption of the network service.

Introduce a new storage solution to enhance data storage capacity

Storage, as a key infrastructure to build a smart campus, is the prerequisite for data processing, data mining, data value, etc. In data storage construction, Jimma University hopes to build a highly reliable storage system with fully redundant design and high storage performance.

Therefore, Jimma University chooses Huawei OceanStor Dorado 3000 all-flash storage with innovative hardware platform, FlashLink intelligent algorithm and end-to-end NVMe architecture, to achieve end-to-end data acceleration and better system performance by 50% when compared with the previous generation, and a whole-life-cycle management to cover resource planning, distribution, system optimization, risk prediction and fault location; meanwhile, the minimal interface design can make customers’ operation and management more convenient and efficient.

By deploying Huawei OceanStor Dorado 3000 all-flash storage, the performance of the distributed file system of Jima University has been improved by 30%, the speed of file traversal and location has increased by 30%, and the reliability of data storage has been greatly improved. Even when 7 of its 8 fault controllers and 1 of its 2 engines fail, it still runs stably in business, without any data loss when any three discs fail, to protect data effectively in the era of large-capacity SSD.

Build Modular Data Center and Construct a solid intelligence base

Data center is the core of smart campus construction and is as important as the foundation and frame of a building. In data center construction, Jimma University hopes to optimize IT productivity, improve resource utilization and support sustainable growth of business in future by modular data center construction; meanwhile, Jimma University also hopes that a new data center will achieve energy saving and consumption reduction, be more efficient in operation and management.

For this target, Jimma University adopts the intelligent micro-module Fusion Module 2000, Fusion Cube 500 Enterprise Branch Miniature Data Center, uninterruptible power supply UPS5000-E, etc., of Huawei to ensure this data center minimal, green, intelligent and secure. In operation and management of this data center, Jimma University adopts the iManager NetEco 6000 of Huawei, to make it much easier to operate and manage a data center.

By modular data center construction, Jimma University, by its closed-channel design, prevents mixing of hot air and cold air and improves efficiency of cooling, by modular UPS, distributes power supply accurately to IT equipment, air conditioning, lighting etc., to save space as much as possible. Moreover, it’s more simple and efficient for its operation and management staff to manage the data center and ensure its safe operation.

When a digital and intelligent ear comes, these new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence are gradually applied in education industry. Online teaching, intelligent classroom, smart class and other various intelligent applications are emerging one after another, with higher requirements on the ICT infrastructure including computing, storage and network etc., with this trend, Jimma University and Huawei will upgrade campus network, data storage and data center, to further support smart campus construction and promote intelligent transformation of education of Ethiopia.