Keio University in Japan Selects Zadara Hybrid Cloud Storage

Zadara Storage Ltd, announced that Keio University has selected the its VPSA storage array to provide file services to their over 2,000 member university staff.

By working with Zadara’s partner Computer Dynamics Corporation (CDC), Keio University is able to upgrade their aging IT infrastructure to address DR and cost challenges, and also position themselves for future growth.

CDC is a provider of enterprise storage solutions. With over 30 years of experience, the company focuses on providing industry solutions to solve customer challenges. By focusing on both short and long-term requirements, CDC is able to architect solutions that address both immediate challenges, but also provide the scalability and flexibility customers need to enable growth.

Keio University is located in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Like most higher education institutions, they face demanding storage requirements. At the same time, they must deal with limited budgets, limited resources, as well as peaks and valleys in capacity and performance requirements – depending on whether classes are in session or on break. The university also needed to deploy a DR architecture that would protect them from a variety of unexpected disasters. To address these challenges, Keio turned to CDC to architect a solution using industry cloud-based technology that would solve their current challenges, and support their capacity, performance and DR needs for many years.

After considering a variety of storage offerings such as NetApp, Inc. and Dell, Inc., Keio University chose the Zadara VPSA storage array to support their file server applications. By replacing their existing storage in Mita (Tokyo) and Hiyoshi (Kanagawa), Japan with centralized VPSA storage at the CDC data center, they reduced their capital, operating and maintenance expenses. The university selected a hybrid cloud architecture combining on-premise VPSA storage as well as a DRaaS remote mirror to VPSA storage at the CDC/Equinix data center in Tokyo.

“Our storage challenges were significant. Our prior storage was old and needed to be replaced and we also need to architect a remote mirror solution to protect us from a variety of potential disasters,” said Yasuki Kaneko, chief administrator of IT center, Keio University. “CDC worked closely with us to leverage the benefits of the Zadara Storage VPSA, and we found it aligned very well with our requirements. We now have a cost-effective hybrid solution that leverages key technologies to securely mirror our data to the CDC data center in Tokyo. We are well protected and have a scalable solution to support future growth.“

“We are thrilled to be able to solve Keio University’s storage challenges,” said Dani Naor, VP, international sales, Zadara. “Higher education has become a very strong market for Zadara Storage given their inconsistent capacity and performance requirements and limited internal resources. The Zadara VPSA solution meets their needs perfectly.“