Back
in Feb 2001, the University studied and adopted the Network
Storage System (NSS) as the standard platform for providing
central storage. The advantages of using the NSS include the
provision for high availability and disaster recovery capability,
the simplification of the backup process by sharing multiple
tape drives among various servers, the provision of data sharing
among multiple servers, and the flexibility of storage management
and expandability. Since then, the Storage Area Network (SAN)
was purchased from the EMC Inc. and implemented as the infrastructure
backbone for the NSS.
The SAN
infrastructure was fully operational in Sep 2001 using the
Symmetrix 8730 hardware storage subsystem with 6TB raw storage.
Initially, it was decided that some of the mission-critical
central hosts will be connected to the SAN, and later to cover
most of the other central hosts providing vital services.
As the data size requirement for each user and application
has grown over the years, together with the need of connecting
other hosts to the SAN, it is necessary to expand the existing
hardware storage subsystem.
During
the upgrade process, it was decided to use Tier-1 storage
for all of the mission-critical hosts, and Tier-2 storage
for those vital servers. At the present stage, the Tier-1
storage will comprise of the Symmetrix DMX 1000 subsystem
and 13TB raw storage, while the Tier-2 storage will be using
the Clariion CX700 subsystem with around 6TB raw storage.
The Clariion subsystem, which is considered to be a cheaper
class than the Symmetrix, will provide more cost-effective
solutions for these systems. The CX700 can accommodate the
fiber channel disks and the ATA disks, the latter is considered
to be an even more cost-effective storage which is very suitable
for data archiving. Furthermore, through storage virtualization,
both the Symmetrix and the Clariion subsystems can be used
in the same host, which is a very flexible solution for data
sharing, and both can share the same centralized backup subsystem
without affecting each other.
With
this upgrade, users would be able to enjoy faster and more
reliable data storage, and a much larger storage quota for
most of the University's activities. Services that enjoy these
benefits include the some of the administrative systems, the
email services, the web services etc. More will be added in
the future.
