CANHEIT 2012 Building the Digital University
Disaster Recovery Through Cooperation
We had a Dream - also a Nightmare Where we have been Where we are today Challenges Where we are going Disaster Recovery Through Cooperation
Who We Are St. Thomas University in Fredericton Mount Allison University in Sackville Université de Moncton in Moncton
We had a Dream... Or Nightmare How would we cope? How would we get there? Who would pay for it? Who would join us
Where We Have Been ECN Datatel cooperation Virtualized servers at one datacentre
The ECN The NB/PEI Educational Computer Network Forty Years (!) of cooperation - Yes... There were data networks 40 years ago... Maybe smoke signals??? Great Organizational model Great Financial Model Network, Spam filtering, software licensing etc.
ECN Network St. Thomas at Fredericton Mount Allison at Sackville Université de Moncton at Moncton Fredericton to Sackville: 250km or < 10ms Fredericton to Sackville: 250km or < 10ms
Datatel Cooperation MUSIC Consortium from 15 years ago Workorder system run from MTA MTA makes customizations etc. STU has provided analyst expertise Single team - lots of savings
VMs at one site MTA early adopter of VM technology STU brought capital to the table MTA built datacentre, has staff Two Universities (120 VMs) in a rack Great efficiencies
Where We Were 2010 Virtualized Servers working very well Current agreement works and is model for small university cooperation Very productive, staff train and work together Huge positive environmental impact Management shares common vision
Timeline to ECN Network Datatel Shared Datacentre
Challenges NO credible disaster recovery capability Rapidly growing storage requirements (memory and disk) Server Hosting/Maintenance Agreement ending 2012 Current Infrastructure EOL in 2012
Where are we going? Original agreement set to expire in 2012 Refresh of current infrastructure (with NO DR capability) would cost about $250, Background of rapid growth in storage and to a lesser extent RAM requirements
KIP Funds STU Applied for KIP funds for several IT projects Received 485K Gave us funds to BOTH refresh datacentre AND establish DR facility
DR Site Looked at several options STU - didn’t want to build a machine room MTA - didn’t want to expand a machine room UNB - in the process of gutting a machine room Private rackspace vendors - problem was getting data to them (cost of bandwidth) Best solution - a University on the ECN network Ended up at Université de Moncton.
D/R Process Technical Staff did considerable research framing the problem and looking for a solution We issued an RFI - received 5 responses Pursued discussions with one respondent to further define plans Issued an RFQ to finalize numbers Bulletproof was chosen as the partner
Adopted Solution MTA - RefreshUdeM - New Servers Storage Automatic Replication over ECN Network (magic )
Engaging UdeM We are excited about engaging another partner, in this case to house equipment Offer on the table for UdeM to put a rack at MTA Leverages ECN investments $500/month + Power
Dell Equallogic Sticker Shock - but it’s “ALL IN” and easy to manage... Atomic Unit is the SAN Simple and powerful Replication is part of the package Peace of Mind (priceless)
Key Points New data centre infrastructure PLUS DR site Five years maintenance up front Retain leadership position in IT New partner U de M, more welcome We sleep better now - much better!
... But there’s more We’ve been approached by two other institutions, both wish to eliminate data centres, both have received quotes from commercial providers. Our costs are about 1/2 the commercial providers We must be doing something right!
New Timeline ECN Network Datatel Shared Datacentre 2015 Datacentre + D/R New Partners
The Future (1 year) We hope to be hosting servers for at least four institutions - Huge win financially, environmentally and politically. (1 year) ECN plans to conduct a review to explore further cooperation/consolidation (3-4 years) be positioned to take advantage of what options exist - ECN Datacentre? Commercial providers? Rebuild of current sites? "the cloud"... Who knows.
Further out... Forecast is cloudy.... But we will be ready for it.
Dilbert...of course there's a relevant Dilbert... We are too cheap to pay $45 to show you the cartoon, so see cartoon for 25/May/2012 at
CANHEIT 2010
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