Nexsan Selected by Brigham Young University

Nexsan Corporation announced that the computer science department at Brigham
Young University has deployed Nexsan’s Flexible Storage Platform to support its
multi-purpose storage infrastructure.

Selected for high performance,
reliability, efficiency and value, the Flexible Storage Platform supports the
department’s virtualized operating environment with high capacity storage for both
structured and unstructured data.

Brigham Young University is the United States’ largest religious
university and the third largest private university in the country. The
university’s Department of Computer Science is known for its high
caliber of faculty, research programs and research facilities. Recent achievements include development and maintenance of
phpLDAPadmin, an open source project.

Researchers at the university’s computer science department create
tremendous volumes of data. To better manage it, they needed a reliable
back-end storage solution for their VMware vSphere 4 enabled virtual operating
environment. At any one time as many as 40 virtual machines can be configured
in support of research storage needs, including structured Oracle and MySQL
database data and unstructured file and image information. As a result, the
department required a flexible and reliable disk array that would
support their active virtual environment.

"For us, reliability and reporting were important features in
our storage system selection process," said Loren Harshbarger, Systems
& Network Architect /Manager, in the computer science department of Brigham
Young University. "I had used Nexsan systems in the past and was confident
in their performance, enterprise-class features and reliability. What’s more,
the Nexsan Flexible Storage Platform allows both iSCSI and FC
connectivity for our virtual computing infrastructure and features such as LUN
masking for a secure multi-user environment. This makes the Nexsan solution
exceptionally flexible for our multi-purpose storage requirements."

Harshbarger turned to IO Dynamics, a Nexsan VAR, to
deploy a flexible storage solution to address the department’s dynamic
infrastructure. Because this IT environment was required to support all types
of data in a flexible way, Nexsan was selected as the
vendor of choice. As a result, the computer science department received
reliability storage along with features, such as power consumption
reduction, and a low TCO for this virtual operating
environment.

The computer science department deployed Nexsan storage populated
with 1TB SATA drives. The SATA RAID storage system is connected to an HP
BladeSystem C3000 enclosure with a dynamic mix of approximately 40 virtual
machines.

Key benefits from this flexible storage environment include:

• Energy-efficient
  AutoMAID Level-3 technology which saves up to 60% in energy costs compared to
  alternative storage systems
• The ability to
  combine SAS, SATA and SSD disks in the same system for ultimate storage
  flexibility
• Support for both
  FC and iSCSI interfaces
• User-friendly
  storage management for configuring and monitoring multiple Nexsan RAID storage
  systems from a single interface
• Reporting and alert
  features for greater insight into storage processes

With the Nexsan storage system in place, students and faculty at the
University are afforded continuous access to data in support of computer
science department projects. One such project includes a Facebook
application called Relative Finder, created by several BYU computer science
major students and Professor Tom Sederberg. The application is run on a virtual
web server and virtual MySQL server which reside on Nexsan storage. Relative
Finder allows users to search back an average of nine or ten generations to
find relatives and can show relationships to famous historical figures.

"As demonstrated in this case, today’s organizations need
storage systems that deliver superior flexibility and performance," said
Victoria Grey, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Nexsan. "Nexsan’s
Flexible Storage Platform has been developed specifically to meet these
requirements. Offering high density, reliability and performance, Nexsan
storage systems reduce operating costs while providing the ideal solution for
multi-purpose storage environments."