University of Milan Selecting Syneto

Syneto Italia, an Europe-based manufacturer of storage industry’s arrays, announced details of its work with the University of Milan.

Syneto was selected among a number of vendors to design and install a new private cloud infrastructure and consolidate the university’s VDI; Syneto’s bid was down to the performance, ease of use, cost effectiveness and scalability of its solutions.

Since its implementation, the Syneto EXTREME Series 220 has reduced the time the university’s IT team spends on storage administration from one hour per desktop to a few minutes for the entire 200 desktop deployment, while the Syneto ARK Series, with its integrated cloud technologies, protects more than 36TB of data and delivers a 3x data reduction rate through continuous in-line block level deduplication and compression.

The University of Milan is one of Europe’s leading universities and, with a student body of approximately 65,000 spread across nine schools; it is also one of the continent’s largest public teaching and research institutions. Its information systems division team is responsible for the maintenance, security and smooth running of all the universities’ IT systems including all storage infrastructure. Prior to starting the tender process the IT team agreed on two overarching priorities: to create a private cloud to consolidate and safeguard the university’s data, and to introduce a VDI solution that would boost efficiency and reduce the time needed for administration and maintenance of the datacentre.

Creating a private cloud
The information systems division team was concerned by the fact that students and university staff alike were storing files on a range of unmanageable and potentially insecure public clouds. The team required a 24/7 solution that would see its original data (such as research) brought into one private cloud so that it could be stored and protected. Key considerations were cost, efficiency and flexibility.

Dr. Luisa Ferrario, information systems division associate manager, University of Milan, said: “We were not just looking at the initial outlay but the TCO and it was clear that Syneto’s easy-to-use and manage arrays would satisfy our technological and business requirements well. The offering of in-line compression, deduplication, VMware integration, a revolutionary filing system with self-healing capabilities, and very strong data protection features, was very compelling for us. Furthermore, Syneto has a dedicated and highly proactive support team who is able to help us overcome any related challenges at any time of the day. To us this is invaluable.“

ARK Series also met the demands placed on the university’s IT team, as it integrated with the existing UnimiBox software developed in-house by the university and provided a reliable and secure cloud infrastructure which can be scaled up to 100TB. The technology has allowed Ferrario’s team to put in place a solid DR strategy by scheduling and carrying out regular snapshots of all the university’s data. ARK Series contains a smart file system, which has also helped the team to prevent silent data corruption such as errors that occur during writing, reading, storage, transmission, or processing of stored data.

Delivering a VDI
The university’s IT team was keen to replace its legacy workstations with a VDI infrastructure that would bolster efficiency while reducing cost and manpower, the latter already shrinking in the face of smaller budgets. This called for a solution that could autonomously and quickly deliver the required storage capacity without costly over-provisioning. During the proof of concept the Syneto Extreme all-flash array delivered 250,000 IO/s.

“The Syneto Extreme storage arrays are exactly what we needed. They can easily reach the hundreds of thousands of IO/s we require and, because they are so easy to integrate and manage, the TCO is lower than it’d be with competing alternatives,” continued Ferrario.

“The University of Milan project perfectly demonstrates the breadth of challenges Syneto provides solutions to. In this case the IT administrator needed a solution that would guarantee the consolidation, protection and management of the organisation’s data. We were able to deliver a private cloud and VDI solution that can easily cope with spikes in data usage, require low level of maintenance, are flexible, and ultimately, delivers a much lower TCO than anything else on the market,” said Vadim Comanescu, COO, Syneto.

About Syneto’s Extreme Series
Extreme Series of storage arrays offers up to 340,000 IO/s. It boosts the performance of enterprise applications and databases while accelerating OLTP and ERP systems with high throughput and very low latency. Using in-line compression and deduplication, VMs benefit from increased performance while lowering the total amount of required disk space. Syneto’s VXClone technology instantly clones VMware datastores if more space in needed. This transparent scalability is achieved from the Syneto Storage OS interface through the company’s VMware integration plug-in.

As VDIs mean random IOs the Extreme series is designed to handle thousands of virtual desktops and the 100Ks of IO/s of varied workloads they generate throughout the day. An all-SSD storage array, the Extreme series offers much higher IO/s than traditional disk storage and lowers the cooling, space and power costs of most datacentres.

“Compared to regular spinning disks, flash drives have a much higher price point. That’s why a low TCO is the key to offering a viable all-flash storage solution. Sleek design and streamlined management is what Syneto all-flash arrays excel at. These qualities lower your TCO by requiring less manpower and time for storage management,” said Dragos Chiran, head of marketing, Syneto.