Abigail Godard
SOC Manager,
Mount St Mary's University
Building Future-Ready IT Infrastructure and Academic Success with Hypervisor Technology
Tuesday, October 28, 2025 | 4:30PM–5:15PM CT | EDUCAUSE Commons, Enterprise Central, Poster Area
Session Type:
Poster Session
Delivery Format:
Poster
Throughout the past year, our IT office has worked to navigate the challenges of the current hypervisor landscape, including rising costs and availability of solutions. At the same time, we have been searching for new, innovative technologies to increase hands-on learning opportunities for students. In this session, we will discuss how these challenges led us to seek alternative hypervisor solutions, how we addressed them in our choice for the IT infrastructure, and how the chosen technology has enabled students to build, manage, and develop solutions within our student-powered Security Operations Center (SOC). First, our Infrastructure Engineering team will share their journey selecting, migrating, and operating XCP-ng, the open-source hypervisor. Then we will discuss how the new hypervisor has created invaluable student opportunities in our SOC, allowing them to gain practical, hands-on experience while developing and deploying solutions for the university. We will conclude by sharing ideas for expanding this initiative to academic departments with computing needs for their classes, research, and more. This session is essential for institutions considering a hypervisor migration or looking to boost academic opportunities through technology.
