British University Shifts to Fluid Data SAN -- Campus Technology

Storage

British University Shifts to Fluid Data SAN

By Dian Schaffhauser
03/21/11

UK-based Sheffield Hallam University has implemented a new storage area network (SAN) using technology from a company recently acquired by Dell. The 33,000-student university has adopted Compellent Technologies' SAN, Storage Center. Dell announced its intent to buy Compellent for $960 million in December; the transaction was completed in February 2011.

The SAN follows a design scheme referred to as "Fluid Data," in which huge amounts of data are analyzed and managed at a granular level and stored to the least expensive drive appropriate to the data's value. Must-have data is moved to faster, more costly drives; data that's hardly ever accessed is put on cheaper and slower drives. The SAN accommodates different drive types, transfer rates, and rotational speeds. A network administrator can manage the storage through a single enterprise management tool.

The school has placed the Dell SAN in its two data centers to support a highly virtualized IT infrastructure with 3,000 computers and 350 physical and virtual servers. The university reported that the Dell SAN has expanded storage capacity from 23 TB to 50 TB; doubled performance; and decreased the storage hardware footprint from 84 rack units to 30.

"In addition to being the only solution that could actually deliver the performance we needed, the amount of flexibility we get from the Dell Compellent architecture in terms of administration and management is phenomenal. It's very, very simple to use," said Dave Thornley, head of networks infrastructure.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

E-Mail this page

Printable Format

Featured

OneDrive Update Adds AI Agents, Copilot Interactions

Microsoft has announced new enterprise capabilities in its OneDrive cloud storage service, many of which leverage the company's Copilot AI technologies.
Digital Leadership Must-Haves for 2025: A CDO's Picks

Now that he's more than a year and a half into his chief digital officer role at NJIT, we've asked Ed Wozencroft to reflect on his areas of concentration: What work must digital leaders "own" in 2025?
Report Highlights Security Risks of Open Source AI

In these days of rampant ransomware and other cybersecurity exploits, security is paramount to both proprietary and open source AI approaches — and here the open source movement might be susceptible to some inherent drawbacks, such as use of possibly insecure code from unknown sources.
Boosting Student Engagement with Interactive and Practical Teaching Methods

Traditional teaching methods like slide-to-slide PowerPoint presentations no longer engage students in the way they used to. Here's how one educator developed engaging, interactive methods to help students grasp complex concepts.