1. The Benefits and Practicalities of Collaboration
Doing More for Less
Doing More for Less:
The Benefits and Practicalities of Collaboration
Matthew Burfeind, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Rhys Davies, University of Leeds / YHMAN Ltd
Debbie Pepper, Colleges of the Fenway
Carlos Varum, Emmanuel College
Thursday
Oct 17th, 2013
8:00 AM - 8:50 AM
Meeting Room 213A

2. Colleges of the Fenway – Who We Are
Emmanuel College (est. 1919)
Coeducational, liberal arts,
Catholic college, 1,750 students
Massachusetts College of Art & Design (est. 1873)
Only public college of art in U.S., coeducational,
1,802 graduate and undergraduate students
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and
Health Sciences (est. 1823)
Coeducational, three campuses,
two in Massachusetts, one in New Hampshire
3,909 graduate and undergraduate students
Simmons College (est. 1899)
Undergraduate college for women, coeducational
graduate programs
4,700 graduate and undergraduate students
Wentworth Institute of Technology (est. 1904)
Coeducational undergraduate college,
focus on engineering and architecture,  
3,636 undergraduate students
Wheelock College (est. 1888)
Coeducational liberals arts college
focus on youth and family
1,046 graduate and undergraduate students

3. Colleges of the Fenway – What We Do
Total enrollment:  approximately 12,000 undergraduates.
Location: a close geographic area on the Fenway, adjacent to medical and cultural facilities,
public transportation, in the heart of Boston.
March 29, 1996  - The COF Principles of Collaboration signed marking the beginning of significant
collaboration.  17 years.
Goal:  To add value to student’s academic and co-curricular opportunities while seeking innovative
methods of investing in services and containing the costs of higher education.
Services : Consortium  includes – The Global Education Opportunities Center, Intramurals Program,
Performing Arts Program, Training and Development Programs, Center for Sustainability, Colleges of the Fenway Area Network and numerous joint contracts and collaborative purchases, cross registration  and Grant Funded Programs such as Emergency Management and The Teaching and Learning Collaborative.

4. Project Overview
What was the problem
Two colleges recognized common need concurrently
Colocation
Colleges of the Fenway (COF) was able to facilitate process
Centralized support/management
COFAN network
Timing, Trust, Opportunity

5. Why Colocate?
Facilities issues
A/C maintenance and costs
Space planning & construction
Getting our ducks in a row
Inventory management
Network cleanup
Physical cleanup

6. Why Collaborate?
Reduce costs
More effective as a team
Knowledge sharing
Ongoing opportunity
Expand our existing relationship
Opens door for additional collaboration
“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”

7. How to Collaborate
Shared project management
Shared purchasing power
Shared responsibility
Pushing each other to succeed
Shared technical resources
Filling in gaps
Redundancy
Shared infrastructure

8. Network Design
Separate but shared circuits from each college to colocation facility
Two 300MB circuits
Load balanced with failover
Use of COFAN fiber to connect colleges

9. Lessons Learned
Colocation
Save money, space, power
Improve environment, efficiency, redundancy
Collaboration
You don’t need to be part of a consortium to collaborate
It's not easy, but you get through it
Save money
Timing and trust are critical
Using staff more effectively

10. Agenda, ‘Doing more for less, better’
The benefits and practicalities of collaboration
‘Doing more for less, better’
Introduction
What is YHMAN ?
What was the problem we needed to solve, the vision & approach?
What have we achieved ?
What are the lessons learnt ?
What are the next steps?
©YHMAN Ltd

11. Internet / JANET connections
What is YHMAN? - A regional network with Global connectivity
YHMAN was established in 1998 as one of the first JANET Partner Networks in the UK
2 x 30Gbps resilient
Internet / JANET connections
Beyond the UK JANET Services
offer onward connect to:
UK Internet Peering
US Internet2
Europe GEANT Network
Japan (NI) & China (CERNET)
©YHMAN Ltd

12. What is YHMAN? - The local picture
Secure.
Resilient,
‘Limitless’ bandwidth,
Free at point of consumption
©YHMAN Ltd

13. What was the problem we needed to solve, the vision & approach?
Drivers for Change
Budgets under pressure = demand for more service at lower cost
Growing Shared Service agenda, both nationally & locally
Unbalanced assets across the Region
Green targets & carbon footprint reduction
Vision
To create a collaborative centre of excellence
To build a mutually beneficial ‘model’ with the belief that:
by sharing assets (equipment, intellect, funding) we can deliver more, better, for all concerned
it can be used for Research Computing, for the benefit of Academia, Health, Commerce for the greater good
Approach
To be pragmatic = build, review, commercialise
©YHMAN Ltd

14. What have we achieved? – the Shared Virtual Data Centre (SVDC)
The UK’s first triangulated datacentre
One of the worlds’ largest spanning single resource pool datacentres
Has the unique capability to span to more than 3 hubs
©YHMAN Ltd

15. Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam Huddersfield, Leeds Met, Hull
What have we achieved? – the SVDC architecture
SECURE
FULL DATA CENTRE
LOW LATENCY RESPONSE
‘UNIVERSAL’
ACCESS
Stretched Resilient
Storage
Area Network
Compute
& Memory
Resource
Pool
3 Site Cluster
Overlay
Stretched Data Centre Network
Access Network
Virtual Data Centre
(Leeds Host)
Virtual Data Centre
(Sheffield Host)
Virtual Data Centre
(Leeds Met Host)
Tier 1 & Tier Synchronous Write
3-Way Mirror iSCSI Virtual Storage
Resilient Trusted
Data Centre Network
YHMAN
Access Network
Sheffield Host
Default Users
Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam
Leeds Host
Default Users
Bradford, Leeds, York
Leeds Met
Default Users
Huddersfield, Leeds Met, Hull
JANET
Internet
Transit
©YHMAN Ltd

16. What have we achieved? - A summary of Services
INFRASTRUCTURE-as-a-Service
(Rapid service deployment)
STORAGE-as-a-Service
(Mobile, Secure, Data Management, VRE)
SOFTWARE-as-a-Service
(Web, Database, VDI, Custom vApp)
HPC-as-a-Service
(Advanced Research Computing)
Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service
‘Helping Hands’-as-a-Service
(Making IT Work)
©YHMAN Ltd

17. £ $ ? ! What we have achieved? – A secure research environment
MRS Electro-microscope Instrumentation & Big Data
Research Assets
What we have achieved? – A secure research environment
Linkage
£ $ ? !
Hosting / Tenancies
Systm1
HPC Cycles
‘Big Data’ - Data Mining
P&G
Research & Commercial Users
NHS
University
Smart Search Access Management
HPC Data Intensive Analysis
ARC N8
White Rose Grid
HPC Grid
Low-to-High Intense Analysis
vHPC Data Entry & Analysis
Storage Wide Area Network
Shared Application Tenancies
Secure Partner Tenancies
Wide Area DC Network
Secure Community Cloud Access Network
SECURITY, CONTROL, ACCESS
©YHMAN Ltd

18. What have we achieved? - A shared research environment
©YHMAN Ltd

19. UniVault www.univault.ac.uk
What have we achieved? - 3 products ready to go to market
UniVault
As a UniVault User you can
Access cloud data from the UniVault Web Portal &/or PC, Mac and mobile user interface - anytime, anywhere
Synchronise file amendments via the cloud across your access devices
Copy, ‘drag & drop’, upload folders/files to the cloud
Share files & folders with others and with project teams securely with file locking
Collaborate from anywhere, any time from any device (avoid exchanging endless attachments)
Safe storage - you know where your data is and who can see it
Create file version control and monitor change logs
Unify access through UniVault to local, campus/premise and Public Cloud storage   
As a UniVault Administrator you can
Secure access linked to organisational authentication systems (Active Directory or other) and host accounts for research and collaboration partners
Easy account management: user groups & policy, secure collaboration for project teams, manage storage
Vanilla VM
3 way resilient architecture for virtual servers
& data storage
Simple management interface
Rapid virtual server deployment
Tiered storage strategy
Helping Hands
Strategy business
& technical advice
©YHMAN Ltd

20. What are the challenges we faced and the lessons learnt?
Start = scepticism
“All talk no walk”
Middle = focus
“so many opportunities”
End = commitment & sales; fear; engaging with the right users
“why would I use this ?”
We will lose control/jobs
IT too frequently does not have the right business focus
The lessons learnt
Communicate and advocate
Trust each other
Persevere
Focus
Customer Service
©YHMAN Ltd

21. Listen, learn, adapt, grow To say “Thank you & any questions ?”
What are the next steps?
The Next Steps
Generate sales
Develop services
Push the technologies
Listen, learn, adapt, grow
To say “Thank you & any questions ?”
©YHMAN Ltd

22. Thank you! For More Information:
Matthew Burfeind, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Interim Chief Information Officer
Rhys Davies , University of Leeds / YHMAN Ltd
Director of IT (Leeds) & Chairman of YHMAN Ltd.
Debbie Pepper, Colleges of the Fenway
Director, Operations and Collaborative Services
Carlos Varum, Emmanuel College
Director of IT
YHMAN is registered in England no: Registered Office: The Company Secretariat 11/75 E C Stoner Building University of Leeds LS2 9JT