jhv1blz5 wrote: The article validated SOA as an IT architecture paradigm that can be leveraged in many ways. Taking data storage, scalability and application performance to a nifty level using SOA Application Grid infrastructure will no doubt enhance data and application performance on Oracle architecture platforms, it also has the promise of a cost effective and efficient IT delivery model. The very benefits of SOA.
ONStor announced that the Rosenstiel School of Marine and
Atmospheric Science at the University
of Miami has chosen the
ONStor Bobcat NAS gateway for its two data centers. The school chose ONStor’s
open, clustered NAS solution, because it provides the reliable, interoperable,
and scalable architecture that its data centers require to process the hundreds
of terabytes of scientific data collected by the university annually.
"ONStor’s virtual file servers act as regular Windows
file servers on our network, but without many of the software update issues of
regular Windows computers," said Michael Anderson, director of computing
at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "By loading a
standardized software image on the ONStor unit, we don’t have to deal with the
downtime and time consumption that updating multiple Windows machines
require."
The Challenge of a Non-Standardized IT Environment One operational challenge for the School results from the
distributed nature of how research is conducted. Individual projects are
relatively autonomous, and sharing common IT infrastructure elements is often
unrealistic. Each project tends to favor a different technology or solution,
and storage purchasing decisions are frequently based on the ability to share
information across parallel technology with colleagues at other institutions.
Collaboration with other interested parties often means that the technology
used in the School’s IT environment is not standardized, limiting what disk
subsystems can be purchased and how they’re deployed and managed.
"With ONStor, a single methodology for providing
network-attached storage is possible, even with our many different varieties of
disk systems," says Anderson.
"We want our scientists to view disk storage as something that 'just
exists' out on the network—like a dial tone when you pick up a telephone.
ONStor interoperates with several of our incumbent mass-storage solutions and
offers us the flexibility to integrate other data management solutions as
required."
The School’s prior storage solution, which had initially
addressed this issue, became too costly to manage and could not keep pace with
a data growth of 50 terabytes a year. Much of the RosenstielSchool’s
largest data files consist of satellite images from above and below the ocean’s
surface. The researchers then study these images and accumulate their findings
onto the storage. ONStor’s cost-effective NAS gateway solution is able to
continually assimilate all of the disparate storage that the School deploys,
presenting it under a consolidated interface for simple administration. Since
the ONStor system can scale up to 3.2 petabytes, there is plenty of room to
keep growing.
Protecting Data Against the Wrath of Mother Nature
"Our primary campus is located on Virginia Key, an
island just off the shore from downtown Miami.
Since we are occasionally in the path of the oncoming hurricanes we study,
offsite replication of critical data is an important consideration," says Anderson. "ONStor
provides a solution that allows us to easily replicate information between data
centers, creating full redundancy, so another copy of our files exists outside
of the path of any natural disaster."
As the only subtropical institute of its kind in the
continental United States,
the RosenstielSchool’s academic community is comprised
of more than 100 Ph.D. faculty members, 190 graduate students, and more than
250 research support staff. Through excellence in applied and basic marine and
atmospheric research, the Rosenstiel School sheds light on today's most
pressing environmental issues, including climate change, sustainable fisheries,
coral reefs, oceans and human health, coastal observation, sea level rise and
hurricanes.
About Virtualization News SYS-CON's Virtualization News Desk trawls the news sources of the world for the latest details of virtualization technologies, products, and market trends, and provides breaking news updates from the Virtualization Conference & Expo.
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