The Ryazan university increases IT infrastructure performance using DWH of Netapp

Task: Creation of a single system of data storage and creation of the separated IT infrastructure

The number of users of information infrastructure of RGU is about 6.5 thousand students and the staff of the university, thus, the higher education institution feels the need for storage of very large volume of data and for providing continuous access to them.

Idle time of the IT system is inadmissible as it has significant effect on educational process. For daily processing of a huge number of data by the management

RGU the decision on use of technologies of virtualization of VMware, in particular applications of VMware of ESX 4.1 was made. However in view of lack of a single external system for data storage for these purposes the built-in capacity on servers of the university was used that substantially slowed down data processing rate and required considerable extension costs of available volume for storage.

Before RGU there was a need of acquisition of the reliable and effective DWH having such potential as flexible selection of disk resources, scalability, and providing uniform management of all data.

Solution

In RGU of Yesenin two Netapp FAS2020 systems are implemented

The management of higher education institution stopped on DWH of production NetApp offered by the system integrator, Eletek company on three basic reasons:

• the most optimal cost among similar solutions of other producers
• simultaneous support of data transfer protocols SAN and NAS
• a set of the technologies providing effective management of data of DWH to Netapp became the first industrial system installed in RGU and allowed to increase the speed of work with data and performance of the main applications.

FAS2020 model is a storage system of initial level. It contains a broad spectrum of functions and technologies based on the Data ONTAP operating system which help to increase efficiency of use of disk space and also to reduce costs on implementation and operation of DWH. The unified architecture allows to increase quickly the capacity of DWH, and additional software – to expand its functionality.

Advantages

The uniform reliable storage system increasing performance of applications is created

Thanks to implementation of a single system of data storage of RGU received sharp performance improvement of the main business applications exacting to the speed of disk transactions.

Use of Netapp Snapshot technology allowed to ensure big safety of data and to simplify backup procedure.

Also storage costs and data management were considerably reduced: now upon purchase of servers there is no need to put expensive disks in their cost, and there was an opportunity to dynamically redistribute necessary disk resources between the working servers.

The main advantage of implementation of DWH in RGU is that the virtualized infrastructure of the university is not tied to a disk subsystem of servers any more – all data are placed in the uniform, on a centralized basis managed storage system.

Also it should be noted ease and convenience of operation of DWH of Netapp: thanks to the Data ONTAP operating system uniform for all models of DWH, IT administrators easily can manage all systems even in case of acquisition, for example, of other configurations for branches of the university.