Supporting End-to-End Virtualization, SANsymphony™-V Delivers Non-Stop Business Operations and High-Availability, Both for the Planned and the Unplanned
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – July 23, 2012 – DataCore Software, the storage hypervisor leader and premier provider of storage virtualization software, today announced that its SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor is now powering an entirely virtualized infrastructure – including servers, desktops and storage – supporting more than 4,500 end users at Spalding University. Spalding University is located in downtown Louisville, Kentucky and its urban campus has been providing academic excellence to its students for nearly 200 years.
The full case study may be found here: https://www.datacore.com/Testimonials/Spalding-University.aspx
Ezra Krumhansl, director of information technology at Spalding University, was looking to increase storage capacity in response to the university’s exponentially increasing amounts of data and to also address a critical flaw in their SAN (storage area network): lack of redundancy/single point of failure. The university was growing quickly and its infrastructure needed to be updated to support this growth.
“We needed to perform significant upgrades to our storage environment and infrastructure so that it could support our growing school,” commented Krumhansl. “In addressing our needs, including introducing redundancy, we weighed many options from the likes of HP and Dell to potentially replace our legacy IBM SAN. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor gave us the flexibility we required to perform a robust upgrade and accomplish all of our goals, without breaking the bank. Being an institution of higher education, we always need to do more with less, so that Spalding can keep tuitions costs affordable to the communities we serve.”
Preparing for the Exam
During the initial selection process, Spalding University considered solutions by HP’s LeftHand and Dell’s EqualLogic to potentially replace their existing IBM fiber channel SAN. A major point of concern was to avoid two things: vendor lock-in and having to perform a very costly rip-and-replace hardware upgrade in just a few years. Krumhansl determined that Spalding University’s IBM SAN did need to be upgraded from its four terabyte (TB) capacity. It was also a single point of failure and did not have any redundancy built in.
Krumhansl wanted failover capability – both for the purposes of disaster recovery/business continuity and for reasons concerning systems maintenance. Bottom-line: Spalding needed non-stop business operations and high-availability, both for the planned and for the unplanned.
Spalding weighed its options of upgrading to a newer IBM fiber channel SAN, or selecting either LeftHand or EqualLogic. The upfront costs with IBM hardware and SANsymphony-V proved lower, as were the long-term/lifetime costs of support, renewals, etc. The real differentiator for Spalding University was having a software solution that was device independent, making hardware merely a commodity.
Storage Hypervisor Makes the Grade
Spalding University ultimately decided to stay with IBM, purchasing IBM 3650 servers, each running DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor. Krumhansl was able to accomplish his goals of virtualizing Spalding’s infrastructure and increasing storage capacity and redundancy. Spalding relied on The Mirazon Group to put storage virtualization software from DataCore at the heart of its IT infrastructure. The Mirazon Group serves as a trusted IT advisor to Spalding University as well as to approximately 50 other DataCore Software customers.
Spalding’s storage infrastructure is now virtualized and supports 22 TBs of data. It is running 30 virtual machines on 15 physical servers. In addition to DataCore for storage, Krumhansl uses VMware for both server and desktop virtualization.
A co-location facility (called “Peak 10”), located just a mile and a half from the university hosts both the primary and secondary mirrored systems – thereby providing the high-availability required by Spalding. The university is connected to this co-location facility through fiber channel connectivity.
“The biggest benefit we have realized with the DataCore storage hypervisor is replication – meaning synchronous, real-time mirroring and the virtualization of the backend storage environment. The data protection features definitely hit home. We don’t worry about losing a hard drive or data because there is redundancy built in, in so far as our having two nodes and even having redundancy within them,” explained Krumhansl.
Krumhansl continues, “The device independence also enables us to install, mix and match any server combination we choose, allowing us to leverage, where needed, the best features that each brand has to offer. The bottom line is that we have the freedom and flexibility to make investments that best suit our needs, both at the time and into the future. Regardless of whether we need an expensive, high performance server for frequently used resources, a cheaper, lower performing one or if we just want to repurpose and extend the viability of existing hardware, we know the storage hypervisor can manage them all.”
A more in-depth case study on Spalding University is available here:
https://www.datacore.com/Testimonials/Spalding-University.aspx
About Spalding University
Spalding University, located in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, combines a rich history, a convenient, urban setting and a commitment to providing academic excellence to over 2,400 students. Spalding’s urban setting provides a strategic location for serving the greater Louisville metropolitan area, particularly with commuter students.
About The Mirazon Group
Delivering world-class technical expertise combined with the highest level of customer service, The Mirazon Group is a premier provider of technology solutions and consulting services and is a strong advocate for virtualization. The company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Infrastructure Partner and has strategic partnerships with VMware, DataCore, Cisco and others. Customers rely on The Mirazon Group as a trusted IT advisor and solutions provider that delivers complete business solutions. Visit www.mirazon.com.
About DataCore Software
DataCore Software develops storage virtualization software for high availability, fast performance and maximum utilization from storage in virtual and physical IT environments. DataCore SANsymphony™-V storage hypervisor is a comprehensive, hardware-independent solution that fundamentally changes the economics of provisioning, replicating and protecting storage in large enterprises and small to midsize businesses. For additional information, visit the DataCore website at https://www.datacore.com or call (877) 780-5111.
Editors’ note: Spalding University IT Environment “At-a-Glance”
DataCore Managed Capacity (Terabytes): 22
Number of Users: 4,500
Number of Physical Servers: 15
Number of Virtual Servers (VMs): 30
Primary Server Vendor: IBM
Storage Vendor: IBM
Server Virtualization Platform: VMware
Desktop Virtualization Platform: VMware
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DataCore Software
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JaeMi Pennington
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