Oxford University Computing Services Uses DataCore SANmelody

DataCore Software announced today that Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS) is implementing DataCore’s SANmelody as the storage platform to sit behind their VM4 Rent service.

OUCS Network Systems Management Service (NSMS) provides high quality and cost effective IT services for all members of Oxford University by centrally operating, developing and supporting the University’s primary computing infrastructure and services on a charge back basis across 25 colleges and 15 departments across many campuses throughout Oxford. As a department, NSMS’ time is frequently spent supporting smaller departments with very limited IT resources.

To this end, NSMS is moving towards adoption of a totally self automated, self provisioning, web based virtualised model known internally as ‘VM4rent’ by, in effect, renting Virtual Machines to their customers (Previously NSMS’ data centre would provide storage services out across Fibre Channel SANs served by IBM/EMC direct attached storage). The infrastructure behind the VM4rent model includes two centralised VMware ESX 3.5 servers and virtualised storage through DataCore’s SANmelody, supporting VMware applications and seamlessly provisioning storage on demand. This virtualised computing on demand service is extremely useful for those departments who require a temporary service – such as a research project that has been granted funding for a year.

DataCore gold accredited partner NCE commenced working with NSMS in 2007 to recommend ways of provisioning storage to facilitate the for VM4rent infrastructure. After an on-site demonstration of SANmelody that illustrated the ease at which the iSCSI SAN automatically could provide the just in time storage allocation from a central storage pool, early in 2008 NSMS purchased the first part of the infrastructure system, a DataCore SANmelody 3TB iSCSI SAN was installed to virtualise their storage.
 
Using SANmelody, NSMS can now sensibly and dynamically enable storage ‘on demand’ which is critical when working on a ‘pay as you use’ allocation service model. Provisioning new machines and storage under VM4rent is now a simple process. Storage and new VMs can be served within minutes as images of the server template are already stored within SANmelody. And there has been another distinct benefit; different departments can now join forces and budgets to utilise joint active system failover protection offered through SANmelody.
 
Jon Hutchings, Senior Systems Engineer, OUCS Network Systems Management Service, notes of SANmelody: “The principles behind our VM4rent scheme are perfectly echoed and served by SANmelody; allowing us to plug in storage and support virtual servers as and when we need, ultimately providing a cost-effective storage solution that we are happy to recommend.”
 
Working with so many different departments and projects it is essential that management of the system remains easy to use and uniform, as the GUI within SANmelody is Windows based, management is straight forward and future proofed by simply adding more licences when required.