Storage
UC Irvine Implements New Storage Management
The University of California Irvine (UCI) has
implemented a new storage system to manage all of its virtualized workloads.
The university's previous data storage arrays were slow, out of date and
causing headaches for IT staff. When virtual machines (VMs) experienced
slowdowns, the legacy storage arrays couldn't pinpoint the source of the
problem, and the complicated upgrade process required significant downtime.
The team went through an extensive evaluation process to identify a new
storage system. When they narrowed down their options to a shortlist of
vendors, they sent out a 92-question survey and used the responses to make
their final selection.
They selected the VMstore T880 system
from Tintri, a provider of VM-aware
storage (VAS) for virtualization and cloud environments. According to John
Ward, IT enterprise architect at UCI, Tintri had the best analytics, could
access data from the VMware vCenter ESX hosts to detect performance issues and
could report on every VM down to the disk (VMDK) level. The team also liked the
fact that they could purchase encryption as a separate add-on, so they didn't
have to buy it up front.
"With some other solutions, you have to buy self-encrypting disks up front,"
said Ward in a prepared statement. "It's great to be able to add encryption
later if our business needs change."
Since implementing the VMstore T880 system, UCI has "vastly improved its
storage performance with better visibility into VM performance and simplified
storage management," according to the company. The new system also enabled the
university to eliminate downtime for software upgrades, create snapshots and
clones on a per-VM basis and access a global view of its infrastructure.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].
