Case Study Karlstad University
Case Study Karlstad University » Our new storage solution has reduced duplicate and redundant data with over 40 percent« Niklas Nikitin, Systems Architect at Karlstad University
Get rid of the file servers! The IT environment in a university is not the same as in a company. While companies often have a locked down, standardized environment, a university must offer a highly flexible IT environment that supports a number of operating systems and software. ”Even if we also standardize to a large degree, we must be able to provide a very flexible environment that can be used by students, researchers and our other staff in all the programmes and courses that the university offers”, says Niklas Nikitin, Systems Architect at Karlstad University. The university has to a large extent virtualized its servers and now has closer to 130 virtual servers, but in many respects it’s the users own documents and other files that are most important and business critical. The customer Karlstad University
”In the users home directories there are Office documents, interviews in MP3 format, pictures, measurement data, in short everything you can think of and fifty more things.”
The challenge
The availability of the users’ home directories is critical. While the IT technicians work normal office hours, it’s common that scientists, students and others work odd hours and weekends.
The university had outgrown its current SAN storage and needed to replace it. The new solution should not only have high performance, availability and scalability, it should also be able to replace the Windows based file servers that required lots of management and caused downtime when being patched.
“Therefore it is crucial that we can provide a very robust and available IT infrastructure that simply works, 24/7. In our previous environment the Windows based file servers caused us lots of problems, not least because of all security updates required that the servers were rebooted.”
The solution
At the end of 2010, Niklas and his colleagues started to work on a specification for a new storage solution to replace the existing SAN network that was reaching its capacity.
After evaluating solutions from several vendors, the university selected a NetApp based solution from Fujitsu’s partner BareApp. The solution acts as both SAN and NAS and consists of two NetApp FAS3210 connected in an active cluster configuration. Thanks to NetApp’s built in NAS functionality the university has been able to phase out all Windows based file servers, which reduces management and increases availability. NetApp deduplication has reduced duplicate and redundant data with average of 40 percent. For the virtual servers duplicate data has been reduced with over 60 percent.
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NAS on top of the wish list
”At the top of our wish list was a built-in NAS functionality that was not based on Windows that would enable us to get rid of our file servers. The new storage should of course have high performance, availability and scalability.” The university started by consulting half a dozen vendors for open-ended discussions to get an idea of the various solutions. One of the vendors was Fujitsu partner BareApp who recommended a solution based on products from NetApp.
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Case Study Karlstad University
”Early on, we saw that no other solution seemed as good as BareApp’s, not least because NetApp is a world leader when it comes to NAS functionality.”
Previously, a backup was performed once per day, but since a snapshot only takes seconds to take, snapshots are taken every three hours during office hours.
Niklas Nikitin says that the IT departments at the universities in Sweden have a good cooperation with each other. Niklas contacted other university IT departments who had experience with NetApp solutions.
“This means that the users files are much more available. Deduplication and Snapshots are two fantastic features. I don’t understand how we could manage without them earlier.”
”The more we talked with the other universities, the more attractive the proposed solution looked.”
The technicians from BareApp installed the storage solution a couple of months before it was going into operation. That gave Niklas and his colleagues plenty of time to learn how to manage the system and to prepare the migration. Five years support is included in the new solution and BareApp monitors the system 24/7 and contacts Niklas or his colleagues if something needs attention.
In April 2011 the university decided on the solution from BareApp. The actual migration was done in July to minimize the impact on the students and researchers and now the storage solution has been in place for a couple of months.
Huge savings with deduplication Niklas Niktin says that the primary reason for the new storage solution was that the previous storage had reached its capacity. ”But the fact is that we now use less disk space than earlier, and that’s because of the built-in support for deduplication in NetApp’s storage. With deduplication, we have saved incredible amounts of disk space.” He continues: ”When BareApp first told us about the advantages of deduplication, we thought: ’It sounds like sales talk, but does it really work?’ Now, we can only conclude that it does. We actually have reduced the used disk space by over 40 percent on average. For our virtual servers deduplication has reduced the used disk space by over 60 percent.”
From hours to minutes In the previous storage solution Tivoli was used for backups. If a user deleted a file by mistake, he or she had to contact the IT department and someone there had to restore the file. It could take hours before the user got the file back.
”Now, our storage has a much higher availability than earlier, which we notice not least by all the positive feedback from our students and staff.”
Technical details ■ Combined SAN and NAS storage that consists of two NetApp FAS3210 connected in an active cluster configuration, where one controller automatically takes over if the other one fails. ■ The cluster uses three DS4243 disk shelves. Two of them have 24 high performance SAS disks, while the third shelf has 12 SATA disks. ■ The cluster is connected to the disks and servers using two Brocade SAN switches ■ The NAS handles 1 500 home directories ■ The SAN provides disk area to four physical servers that run closer to 130 virtual servers
”Now we use NetApp’s Snapshop functionality and thanks to that the user can do the restore themself, and to do the actual restore is very easy.”
Fujitsu in collaboration with
For more information about the solution, please contact: BareApp Stockholm Åldermansvägen 19-21, 171 48 Solna William von Schrowe Telephone: 0735-17 01 07 E-mail: william.von.schrowe@bareapp.se Contact, BareApp: BareApp Linköping(HK) Gamla Tanneforsvägen 39, 582 54 Linköping Telephone: 013-991 30 30 E-mail: info@bareapp.se www.bareapp.se
Contact Fujitsu Sweden AB Address: P.O.Box 40, SE-164 93 Kista, Sweden Phone: +46 8 793 70 00 Email: productsales@se.fujitsu.com Web: se.fujitsu.com ND/SE 11/11
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