Scottish Agricultural College Selects DataCore

DataCore Software announced that its SANsymphony-V
software has been deployed at the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) to
utilise the Cluster File shares and Network Attached Storage capabilities
included within their Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 platform.

The next
generation of DataCore’s software, SANsymphony-V, was recommended and
configured by a leading Scottish solution provider, Tecnica Ltd.

This DataCore
authorised partner designed the system to manage both NAS file sharing and SAN
or directly attached storage. The system now spans across 3 nodes; one within
SAC’s main Edinburgh
campus and the other two some 8 miles away within the College’s Research and
data centre campus. While operational
for less than a month, the integrated combination of DataCore and
Microsoft has decreased the College’s reliance on costly hardware solutions and
added a new level of fault tolerance and data protection to its clustered
NFS/CIFS file sharing.

The key driver for change for the College came in Autumn
2010 when their existing environment came to end of life; moving from a complex
and costly Sun infrastructure in favour of a Microsoft Windows based platform,
whilst consolidating storage and eliminating bottlenecks and disruptions. They
commenced the search for alternatives and Tecnica Ltd responded with a DataCore
software-based solution that lowered cost and ongoing capital
outlays and stressed the importance of being device independent with a software
based solution:

"The DataCore unified storage software layer provides
the performance and functionality we require to effectively manage our current and
future data requirements and has removed complexity, cost and support skills
exposure from our storage infrastructure", said Ronnie McIntyre, IS Infrastructure and Operations Manager,
SAC.

"Some of the features that attracted us to DataCore’s
SANsymphony-V were the transparency and ease of management which it offered
along with the flexibility of design configuration to allow us to build a
solution that would match our performance and resilience requirements. As with
many organisations we required an agile solution to be able to meet the demands
of the business whether generated through strategic / legislative requirements
or market opportunities," said Peter Gowler, Infrastructure Systems
Architect, SAC.

Unified Storage
with No Costly Specialty NAS Hardware:
Keith Joseph, Regional Manager, DataCore Software,
commented: "What the SAC IT team, working closely with Tecnica have
achieved here is what data centre managers have long been seeking – a simple,
cost effective way to easily manage their disk resources and address potential
single points of failures in their vital NFS/CIFS files shares. Previously,
SAC’s choice would have been restricted to either picking from a few specialty
devices that provided the needed redundancy at a steep price, or take the risk
that a storage-related disruption would cripple their entire
infrastructure."

DataCore’s design at SAC employs dual copies of the
SANsymphony-V software providing high-availability mirroring and performance
acceleration layered beneath clustered file shares (NAS) integral to Windows
Servers 2008 Enterprise.
SAC can now employ and reutilise any standard storage device for disk space,
ranging from standard hard drives to existing external disk arrays offered by
the storage systems vendors. With the solution, splitting the file
share cluster remains across two machines, while the DataCore software runs on
two separate servers dedicated to managing the block storage virtualisation.