The University filestore has recently gone through a hardware refresh and the University is reaping the benefits. iSolutions has upgraded the Isilon storage system for all home folders (including ‘my documents’ etc) and the Resource Filestore (the ‘J: drive’).
Staff and students will notice a much faster service when accessing and saving files to their own document store or a shared filestore as the speed has dramatically increased with the introduction of the 10Gb datacentre network to this service.
The storage capacity has also been increased by 30% taking it up to 552TB, equivalent to approximately 340 million Word documents*, ensuring the University can hold more information on our shared filestores. Files are also being backed-up offsite every 6 hours rather than every 24 hours, as was the case before the upgrade took place.
The new storage equipment also takes up less room in our datacentre and draws less power, providing a greener, more efficient service.
Prof Simon Cox, Chief Information Officer, said:
“The new storage equipment will provide the University with enhanced storage to meet our capacity growth over the next 5 years. The solution we have implemented is leading the way in how to deliver file storage for large scale complex organisations.
“The Isilon storage system was first introduced to the University of Southampton in 2012 which resulted in a centralised, resilient, and highly available solution for university wide file stores supporting over 35,000 users. This latest upgrade builds on the work which began in 2012 creating a faster, bigger and greener storage service.”
iSolutions extend their thanks to all those involved in the filestore improvement project.
For further information and to learn more about iSolutions, please visit the iSolutions website.
*approximation based on current university data storage levels.
If you have any queries, please email: [email protected]
