Focus on... Storage

Features
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What do IT decision makers need to consider when it comes to choosing the right type of storage for business?

The department's IT service division decided to replace the ageing Unix system. Cost was also a significant driver in the selection process with strict budgetary restrictions in place, along with reliability and ease of deployment. The business stability of the supplier and ability to adhere to installation deadlines were important considerations.

It evaluated a number of suppliers, including EMC, BlueArc, NetApp, and Isilon. In the end, it opted for a solution from providers ONStor and Infortrend to provide increased data integrity and reliability, improved performance and manageability, scalable capacity and improved data recovery.

The department invested in two Bobcat 2440 clustered NAS gateway servers, each with 12 Terabytes of Infortrend storage, located at disparate sites, with file systems mirrored between sites.

Benefits

The new Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution, now allows the university's engineering department to provide all of its users with appropriate amounts of home directory storage, with much greater resilience than before, using both NFS and Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocols.

Jennifer Scott
Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.