Storage Strategies at
The University of Iowa
May 12, 2010
Central File Storage
Base
Entitlement
• Individuals: 1-5 GB
• Departments: 1 GB per FTE
4 Hour Recovery
Objectives
• Asynchronous replication to identical
system at remote data center
99.97% Uptime
• < 1 hour of downtime in the past year
89%
Participation
• 33K of 37K eligible users
2
The
Effect
“One price fits all” network file
storage
Lower-cost network file
storage
Lowest-cost bare server
storage
3
Storage Tiers
High
Performance
Enterprise SAN
Central File
Storage
Low Cost SAN
Target Users
Centrally
managed servers
End users or
Distributed
distributed servers servers
Funding Model
Centrally funded
Base entitlement,
pay for more
Pay for use
Monthly Price
per Gigabyte
N/A
$0.12 – $0.25
$0.03 – $0.14
http://its.uiowa.edu/spa/storage/
4
5
Moving Forward
• 10 peer institutions
• 17 campus units
• 2.7 petabytes of campus storage
Interviewed
partners,
peers
Categorized
storage
Analyzing
data
Storage
Services
Roadmap
6
Campus Storage by Provider
UI Libraries
4%
College of Public
Health
8%
Other
7%
Information
Technology
Services
42%
Institute for
Clinical and
Translational
Science
12%
College of
Engineering
27%
7
Storage by University Mission
Teaching
11%
Public Service
3%
Research
51%
Administration &
Overhead
35%
8
Storage by Access Type
Online
24%
Backup
72%
Archive
4%
9
Issues
Research storage
Backup storage
Archival storage
• Fragmented
• Poor data protection
• Inefficient
• No central service
• Few options
• Shifts to online or
backup storage
Cost
10
Possible Next Steps
Identify and promote research solutions
Build central backup service
Build, promote archival solutions
11
Lessons Learned
Valuable
data
Invaluable
process
Built on
existing
community
12