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U Liverpool Deploys iSCSI in Virtualized SAN

The University of Liverpool Department of Computer Science is moving away from direct-attached RAIDs to a virtualized SAN environment using StorMagic's SM Series iSCSI Storage Area Network.

According to the university, the department was using a system comprising three individual RAIDs and various DLT tape drives attached to two servers. Two were for faculty; one was for students. Using the iSCSI SAN, the storage devices were networked to make storage "more efficient" and to protect data.

"Because of the nature of our department, our users generate vast amounts of data and want to have access to a technology infrastructure that offers them very high availability and performance 24/7," said Kenneth Chan, principal experimental officer at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool. "The existing RAID systems were directly attached to the servers and as a result, they were becoming marginalized. We decided that networking our storage would be more effective, and the StorMagic system was the answer for us. The StorMagic system is effectively a SAN that uses existing Ethernet cabling and 'ordinary' Ethernet switches; hence, it eliminates the need for a Fibre Channel infrastructure, which tends to be complex and costly. We plan to also deploy our StorMagic system for near-line disk-based archiving."

The University of Liverpool's Department of Computer Science serves more than 500 undergraduate students and has 94 permanent staff, research assistants, and Ph.D. students.

About the Author

David Nagel is the former editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Group and editor-in-chief of THE Journal, STEAM Universe, and Spaces4Learning. A 30-year publishing veteran, Nagel has led or contributed to dozens of technology, art, marketing, media, and business publications.

He can be reached at [email protected]. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrnagel/ .


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