UK University of Hull Has Chosen Data Archiving Solution From BridgeHead

The University of Hull has chosen a data archiving solution from BridgeHead Software to help manage a rapid growth in stored data. Archiving will also help the University cut backup windows and reduce the environmental impact of its storage infrastructure as part of the Carbon Trust’s Higher Education Carbon Management (HECM) programme.
 
Working with systems integrator NexStor, the University, which has a population of almost 20,000 students and 2,500 staff, is rolling out BridgeHead’s BH FileStore software to automatically archive data from its Network Appliance fibre channel storage system onto secondary media, including SATA disk.
 
“We’ve seen a big increase in storage demand and want to plan for the future so that we’re managing costs as well as cutting the energy and resources we’re devoting to storage and backup as part of our commitment to the environment”, said Dr David Jarvis, Desktop and Data Services Manager for the University’s Computing Services department.
 
Addressing the environmental issue is an important driver because the University of Hull is actively working to measure and cut its carbon footprint as part of the HECM programme.
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“For many years, we only had ≤ TB of central storage to accommodate the requirements of both students and staff. After moving to the Network Appliance solution two years ago, this quickly expanded to 20 TB,” explained Dr Jarvis. “Many of our users were storing large amounts of important information on their own hard drives and other devices. Moving this to central storage – coupled with a general increase in demand – meant we had to plan ahead before our data management got out of control.”
 
Much of the University’s storage is taken up by files and multimedia content for teaching and learning material. There is also research related information including mapping data used by the Geography department and X-ray and imaging information retained by Medical Engineering.
 
“We need to keep data, especially research data, for many years. And because some of it doesn’t need to be accessed frequently we saw an opportunity to archive it to lower cost disk storage. Over time, older data will be moved off line to removable storage such as tape or optical media.”
 
Over the long term, this means the University will not be amassing little used data on its primary storage. In addition to reducing storage costs, this will have the knock-on benefits of cutting the size of daily backups as well as reducing the volume of data that might need to be replicated to a secondary disaster recovery site, which is something the University is considering.
 
“Reducing backup volumes was important because backup windows were already approaching twelve hours and we could see this becoming an even greater problem in the future. And of course by using less spinning disk, reducing backups and minimizing the data we might need to replicate we reduce the power and cooling resources we consume overall,” said Dr Jarvis.
 
The University was initially hesitant about adopting archiving because of a previous bad experience with an Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) product, which had resulted in it losing some data. After evaluating a variety of archiving products, Dr Jarvis and his team were impressed with the BridgeHead FileStore demonstration that NexStor had arranged.
 
“We were very reassured by the demo which persuaded us that BH FileStore could keep our data accessible and viewable once it was in the archive,” explained Dr Jarvis, describing FileStore’s ‘stubbing’ facility which makes archived data transparent to end users.
 
Data that is removed from the primary store is replaced with 1KB placeholders, or stubs, which effectively allow end users to access the file content from the archive as if still in the live environment. Because the software enables data to be catalogued and indexed before entering the archive, it is also possible to perform advanced searches by file content and attribute.  
 
Another important factor was the fact that BridgeHead was a well established company with UK support as Dr Jarvis explained.
 
“We’re putting in place a long term strategy so we wanted to avoid newer suppliers who we couldn’t be sure would be around in years to come. And it was important that they could support us from the UK because we didn’t want to encounter the same issues we’ve had when making technical support calls to other countries. In addition, the licensing model offered by BridgeHead allows us to control our costs. We’re not charged on the basis of the number of users as some other suppliers wanted to do. With over 20,000 potential users this would work out way too expensive. Instead we’re being charged a set amount based on the volume of data we archive. So not only is it one of the best products we’ve seen, it’s also affordable.”
 
BH FileStore is a policy based automated storage management system that analyses, monitors, and reports on primary disk utilisation. The system automatically copies and repositions data based on IT policies to a full range of secondary storage targets.  IT can define and enforce unlimited rules for any logical data set to ensure that primary disk is optimally utilised and secondary copies of data exist on any combination of media and at multiple locations in compliance with internal and external data availability standards. The system is storage ‘independent’, providing unlimited flexibility for selecting and deploying different types of storage media.