University of Toronto Network System
The
University of Toronto's network-attached storage system gives users universal
access to documents; Video conferencing enables global collaboration at Berklee
College of Music.
A network-attached storage (NAS) system at
the University of Toronto at Mississauga has made it possible for all 6,400
students to retrieve their data from anywhere- on or off campus. In the past,
students stored files on floppy disks or on servers that could only be accessed
from a particular computing services location. However, many files, such as
Microsoft Corp. PowerPoint presentations, are too big for floppies, and students
often use different computing centers as they move around campus.
The computing services staff evaluated a range of potential solutions and selected
a NAS system over a storage-area network (SAN) because it was a better fit for
file serving. Now, each student has a 10 MB storage area that he or she can
access from any Microsoft Windows or Unix desktop at the university or from
anywhere off campus via an Internet connection.
'We have received so much positive feedback on the NAS approach that, by popular
demand, we are planning to expand it to cover 250 faculty members in the near
future,' says J'e Lim, manager of computing services at the university. The
new storage system is more convenient for students and less labor-intensive
for the technical staff than the decentralized storage used in the past, he
adds.
Mississauga, one of three campuses of the University of Toronto, offers degree
programs in sciences, social sciences, management, and humanities and has more
than 150 graduate students, predominantly in the life sciences. Students frequently
use the campus' nine computing centers to prepare class assignments and conduct
independent research.
With servers located at each computing center, it wasn't practical to offer
each student dedicated storage on one server. Most students use multiple computing
centers so offering storage at one center was a poor solution, complicated by
the fact that there wasn't enough local storage to go around.
As a result, most students carried their work on
floppy disks, which became increasingly difficult as average file sizes
increased. Students often had to download large programs or work with graphics
files that were too large to fit on a single floppy. Also, floppy disks
sometimes became corrupted, and students who had neglected to back up their
files had to redo significant amounts of work.
Some students tried to get around these problems by making special arrangements
to store larger files at one of the computing centers, but this created administrative
headaches for the staff because maintenance and backup tasks had to be repeated
on multiple machines located throughout the campus.
The process of finding a solution to this problem, Lim says, led to a major
debate among the technical staff. Some favored the SAN approach, in which servers
are connected to storage at the block level, while others preferred the NAS
approach, which connects the entire network to storage that is accessible at
the file level. A consensus was reached to go with NAS because staff members
concluded that it provided a simpler, more robust and more economical approach
to what was, in essence, a file-serving application.
The technical staff then conducted a detailed evaluation of the leading NAS
solutions. An important consideration was maintaining compatibility with the
multiple computing environments used at the university, including Windows and
Unix workstations and a Novell Inc. NetWare Version 4.11 local-area network.
'While no NAS system would support Novell directly, we found one—the Auspex
[Systems Inc.] NetServer—that provided an innovative workaround,' Lim says.
'Our [Windows] NT workstations log in through Novell, and Novell mounts the
NAS through Samba [Common Internet File System] emulation software. Then the
NT workstations can talk directly to Samba without going through the Novell
server.' Samba is an open source suite that provides seamless file and print
services to CIFS clients.
The technical staff also saw value in the Auspex architecture, in which the
input/output node is the fundamental building block. Each node contains an dual-processor
motherboard that has logically separate processing functions. The network processor
manages network protocols and associated caches. The file and storage processor
is dedicated to managing file systems and associated storage hardware. The result
is a dramatic improvement in performance—approximately twice as many network
file system operations per second as comparable systems.
Lim and his team selected an Auspex NetServer with two 100 MB I/O ports. One
is connected to a Unix Internet server and the other to a virtual LAN consisting
primarily of Novell servers at the local computing centers. Each student has
10 MB of storage space that can be used for local storage and for his or her
personal Web site. The system currently has 500 GB of storage space configured
with RAID 5 redundancy, as well as dual power supplies.
The Auspex service team worked with Lim's staff to get the server up and running
in minimal time. Plans are in place to expand the storage capacity to 1 terabyte
during the next few years as the amount allotted to students rises and more
members of the university community receive storage space.
Students can access their storage resources throughout the university, and they
can also upload and download files from any location where they have an Internet
connection. To access the files from a PC on campus, students simply log in
and select Start/MyFiles or click on the myfiles icon at the top of their desktop
screen. To access their files from an off-campus site via the Internet, they
log in to the university's FTP site and are immediately directed to the proper
directory.
The NAS solution has also substantially reduced the maintenance workload for
Lim's staff. Typically, maintenance tasks such as cleaning and backing up user
directories only have to be performed once at a single location, reducing the
maintenance workload to a fraction of what would be needed if all students were
provided storage on local machines.
Auspex NetServer offers an approach called creating point-in-time copies, which
involves writing changes to a second device during a backup to ensure a clean
image of the system at the time the backup began. Lim's team makes a point-in-time
copy of the entire storage system every night and stores one week's worth of
snapshots for access by students who may have inadvertently deleted a file.
The system's performance has been excellent, Lim says. 'Since the unit was installed,
we have never had a single minute of downtime, nor have we ever had to call
on [the company's] service staff. We have dealt enough with the people at Auspex
to know that they are great to work with. They take a proactive approach by
alerting us to any upgrades or possible problems.'
He adds: 'But the best part of implementing NAS has been the positive feedback
that we have received from students who no longer have to squeeze their files
onto floppy disks or try to remember which of the university's computing centers
they used to store an important file. Naturally, the faculty members now want
access to the same system, and we are in the process of expanding its capacity
to accommodate their needs.'
For more information, contact J'e Lim, University of Toronto at
Mississauga, at (905) 828-5311.