The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has two missions: safeguarding the cultural heritage of New Mexico’s Native American tribes through an interactive museum and historical archive and developing investments for the tribes’ future financial stability. Recent changes in the center’s information technology department have made an impact on both missions, allowing more secure data storage for sensitive historical records and artifact catalogs and greater oversight on the development side.

“[If] we can be a showcase, not only in the technological realm, but also how we budget and take care of money, that shows huge commitment to what we’re doing,” said Andrew Chavez (pictured), network and information technology manager at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.

Chavez spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Justin Warren (@jpwarren); chief analyst at PivotNine Pty Ltd, during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed how adopting a hyperconverged solution is changing the face of IT at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. (* Disclosure below.)

Flexibility key to fiscally responsible IT

Chavez came to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center with a background working with unified computing solutions, so hyperconvergence wasn’t part of his original plan. However, an introduction to Nutanix Inc.’s HCI solutions at the TribalNet conference turned Chavez onto the hyperconverged path, and he committed to a five-year plan with Nutanix, building out a data center and moving to a full virtual environment.

“What we’ve been able to do is take those different single servers and move them into a virtualized environment, and then be able to build out a storage area and place user files, and group files, and all the disparate storage areas that were siloed throughout the environment,” Chavez said. “It’s just made us better at what we do and [to] be able to watch what we’re doing a lot better.”

Geographical dispersion is a key benefit of using Nutanix HCI, with Chavez describing how his team has separated multi-node clusters in single boxes to protect data, with VMware’s site recovery manager keeping the geographical locations up and maintaining business continuity. “At the end of the day when we’re all done, we can have up to four to six sets of backups throughout any portion,” Chavez said.

The ability to budget conservatively, buying piece-by-piece and building out as needed, is important for Chavez’s goal of being a showcase for fiscal responsibility.

“IT is always seen as a cost center, and we’d eventually like to not be a cost center,” he said. “We’d like to make money, but we have to be fiscally responsible.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld conference. (* Disclosure: Nutanix Inc. sponsored this segment, with additional broadcast sponsorship from VMware Inc. Nutanix, VMware, and other sponsors do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo:SiliconANGLE