1. Managing Explosive Data Growth
EDUCAUSE 2008
PRESENTER: Ronan Glynn

2. Case Study: MSKCC Established in 1884 9000+ Employees
Regularly rated #1 US Cancer Hospital
In 1948, Sloan-Kettering Institute formed
1500+ Employees
SKI Computing Group formed in 2003

3. Our User Environment
45% PC
55% Mac

4. 2003: New Research Building Announced
Space for 100+ new labs
New Graduate School
All documents and materials to be online
At the time, many labs stored research locally

5. 2003-2005: Growth Spurt Scaled from 0TB-5TB-15TB
Architecture is FC disk in high- end enterprise array
Tape backup sets with off-site rotation
Still in process of migrating data online

6. : Growth Spurt
Meet with labs & analyze their data usage patterns
Evaluate Vendor hardware, data sizes and projected growth
Learn about user tolerance for clients & “extra-clicks”
Storage budget is drawn up and analyzed

7. Results of User/Data Analysis
Data is 99% Un-Structured
Used typically in a 1 year cycle
Use after 3 years is extremely low
Users do not know how much storage they need
Users want to minimize workflows
Data redundancy concept not being grasped

8. Unique Situations
Labs survive on grant funding. If a grant runs out, the lab leaves MSKCC
2 data sets need to be copied: 1 for MSKCC, and 1 for the departing lab
This created a need for near-line storage
Some lab equipment unsuitable for data storage, other labs have specific need for ultra-fast data writes
VIP users had to be catered for differently

9. Research automation accelerates data growth
Genescan Device
High-Throughput Screening

10. Data Growth vs. Drive Capacity Growth
Storage growth is outpacing storage budget growth by 150% per year for SKI
Drive capacity increases not keeping pace with data growth
Most apparent with Enterprise-class drives like FC, SCSI & SAS

11. Searching for a solution
Must be Mac compatible
Client installs not feasible
Macs cannot use DFS, have issues with file locking and resource forks
No login scripts possible
Data archives a necessity

12. 2006: New Building Opens Zuckerman building opens
23 stories (4 floors below ground). 558K sq. feet.
Deepest bedrock excavation in history of Manhattan (75 feet)
New labs bringing 1-5TB with them
Innovative Storage Tiering in place

13. Data Storage Environment
< 9 months
9 mo. - 3 yrs
> 3 yrs.

14. Storage Environment Details
TIER 1(50TB): EMC Celerra NAS Array w/ FC & high density SATA
TIER 2(32TB): EMC Centera: ATA based CAS solution. Auto-archives from tier 1 based on file age policy
TIER 3(10TB): Powerfile A3 Archiver. NAS enabled optical jukebox that utilizes GB ejectable Blu-Ray discs.
Unique Situations: Fast data writes handled by Isilon clustered NAS solution. VIP needs satisfied by back up televaulting using “Time Machine” and “Backup PC”. Time Machine is built into OSX 10.5, data is written to DAS storage attached to OSX Server. Backup PC is an open source backup solution for Windows & Linux, data is written to a share on Tier 1 storage array.

15. Powerfile Blu-Ray Archiver
WORM long term archiving
Stores 50GB data on a Dual Layer disc
Low power & cooling costs
Blu-Ray now industry HD standard
Disc size set to grow to 100GB

16. Isilon: Main Campus Storage
Main Campus storage required for labs requiring near real-time data writes to disk
Virtualized storage accommodates rapidly evolving storage growth
Isilon clustered NAS solution selected to meet these labs needs, with 33TB usable space
Fast data writes on private VLAN satisfies demand for high throughput on data copies

18. Backup PC Free Linux based solution Schedule set by admin console
Backup by hostname
User can have their own restore interface
Compression & pooling features

19. Time Machine Account created on OSX Server
Point Time Machine to Mac Server
Incremental backups every hour (system files can be excluded)
Users set schedule and restore files themselves

20. Questions