{"id":14112,"date":"2022-04-20T12:51:43","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T11:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/?p=14112"},"modified":"2022-04-27T12:00:01","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T11:00:01","slug":"ucla-delivers-flexible-and-scalable-storage-with-nexsan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/2022\/04\/20\/ucla-delivers-flexible-and-scalable-storage-with-nexsan\/","title":{"rendered":"UCLA delivers flexible and scalable storage with Nexsan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) has delivered superior storage service to its users with the deployment of the Nexsan E-Series.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) needed to purchase and deploy a storage solution with enough flexibility, capacity and scalability to serve its varied user base. It also needed to procure this storage to make business sense for the university, given its fee-for-service IT model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the Nexsan E-Series now in its environment, the university has delivered superior service to its users while exceeding all key metrics it set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IT infrastructure challenge<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

UCLA is known worldwide for the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. UCLA\u2019s strength is its size, allowing for exceptional diversity and virtually limitless possibility. The university is a shared public asset that benefits society by educating students, creating knowledge through research discoveries, powering the economy and improving quality of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UCLA\u2019s central IT infrastructure is a fee-for-service model; researchers, departments and other users lease a specific amount of storage from the university for a specific period of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their uses for that storage range all the way from supporting cutting-edge research to archiving data and beyond, and because of this variety IT administrators have to be careful that their entire infrastructure is flexible enough to deliver proper service for all users in all cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, their biggest users are in the medical domain; they have to ensure the system complies with regulations and security needs in addition to being fast, available and reliable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As capacity needs have grown, and user requirements and IT features have evolved, the university realized it needed a storage system that could deliver on some key requirements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. It needed to provide reliable storage for the entire IT infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. It needed to be dense enough to deliver value in limited floorspace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. It also needed the storage to be flexible enough to grow and evolve with its users. As new systems and features have come online, the storage needs to be able to scale appropriately and work with the other various hardware and software systems they may need to acquire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite these needs, the university\u2019s fee-for-service IT model required that the storage system be procured cheaply enough for the university to be able to essentially re-sell it at a price point that would make it more attractive to its users than bigger cloud storage options such as Amazon or Google.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plus, in addition to being competitive, the university hoped to at least cover its expenses, if not even produce some revenue to re-invest into additional services. IT employees found it to be very difficult to find a solution that could do everything they needed at a low-enough price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a two-year research and testing process, UCLA selected and purchased a series of Nexsan E-Series Model E60 storage systems. The IT department decided to create five \u2018storage pods\u2019 \u2013 each with one E60 SAN system and two E60X systems connected to the central E60.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the pod, UCLA decided to deploy active-active controllers, each with a pair of dual 10GB ports. As a result, each pod features eight 10GB ports and 18 LUNs that feed directly into the university\u2019s 40GB switches and interconnects. Being that all drives in the system are 4TB, and the entire infrastructure contains almost 1,000 spindles, the system can currently scale up to several petabytes of storage \u2013 enough to serve its users\u2019 current needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deployment was done in phases; one pod with 250TB of storage came online within six weeks of purchase, and the rest came along within the next 12-18 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Results and benefits<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On all accounts, the Nexsan storage systems have exceeded expectations at UCLA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n