Universities, like many service providers, face the constant challenge of dealing with ever-increasing amounts of data. Storing it is only half the battle -- the job isn't finished until archiving, retrieval and backup solutions are resolved.

One of Australia's largest universities had to find a new solution to the ever-increasing demand for storage backup whilst facing rapid growth across its campuses. The results speak for themselves with benefits including an 83 percent increase in productivity.

Providing an IT infrastructure for over 32,000 students and 4,500 staff is no easy feat, let alone storing and backing-up data for all of those users. Deakin University, based in Geelong, was established in 1974 and is now one of the largest universities in Australia. Spread across Victoria, its campuses are located in Melbourne (Burwood and Toorak), Geelong (Waurn Ponds and Waterfront) and Warrnambool.

Craig Warren, Deakin's IT director, oversees 160 staff in the Information Technology Services (ITS) division based at Waterfront and was tasked with the job of solving the university's increasing demand for storage. Because the amount of data Deakin was generating and storing was increasing significantly each year, the job of protecting and making data available was a continuing challenge. This growth in demand translates to an increase of 33 percent per year (40TB).

According to Warren, "The key challenges faced by the IT team were coping with the sheer volume of data we needed to store, shrinking backup windows, more server infrastructure and shorter restore times. It was clear we couldn't resolve these issues with our existing storage infrastructure but had to look at better ways to manage our IT service excellence more effectively and ensure we delivered on our Service Level Agreements [SLAs]."

Universities have a legal requirement to keep all student results. So, if a past student applies for a government position 80 years after graduating, their academic results must still be on record. With 10,000 new students a year, the amount of data stored quickly adds up. In addition to this, e-mails at the university are kept for seven years. If a student defers or withdraws from study, the record is stored on-site for one month into the next semester and then archived off-site.

Besides managing the student database on Oracle 9i, Deakin developed its own in-house content management software -- called the Deakin Web Management Tool -- to effectively manage its learning content. Teaching content is delivered to students via Blackboard's WebCT e-learning portal which typically sees up to 22,000 unique users each week. Currently 15 percent of all units are totally online -- part of the Vice-Chancellor's strategic target to increase online learning. The content for each unit may consist of audio and video recorded lectures (available as streamed video, podcasts or downloads) or other content (such as lecture notes).

The road to recovery
Rather than going through a drawn-out tendering process, Deakin usually deals with long-term preferred suppliers where a previous track record has lead to a reliable outcome. Warren doesn't see the value in tendering a project to vendors when previous success has resulted, and prefers proven QoS (quality of service) over simply going with the lowest bidder.

In the past, Deakin had found success using SDLT (Super Digital Linear Tape) with Quantum enterprise tape libraries. "Deakin has always been an advocate of SDLT technology and has used this exclusively in our backup environment. The original Quantum P3000 and P7000 tape libraries are still in use and they have been deployed [at Warrnambool and Burwood, respectively].", Warren explains.

Deakin commissioned Dimension Data, an information systems integrator, to assist with a data audit and, subsequent to the company's recommendation, to procure a Quantum PX720 enterprise tape library. Installation was handled directly by Quantum (with assistance from Deakin's IT personnel) as is after-sales support.

In total, only three employees worked directly on the project: a project manager, business analyst (who was primarily focused on policy retention) and a technical specialist (one of the programming staff at Deakin).

Primary storage is housed on an IBM TotalStorage DS8100 -- with a capacity of 112TB, including disk-mirroring for critical data. A second on-site backup is stored on the Quantum PX720 at its Waterfront campus. A third back-up is stored off-site on separate campuses up to 80km away.

Another success story
The total timeframe for implementation was a mere eight weeks: four weeks for planning and preparation prior to delivery, two days to commission the equipment and another four weeks for tape migration to the new equipment.

No major problems were reported with implementation. Two new data centres had recently been installed which made the upgrade easier as did thoroughly testing existing data hardware. Warren puts it down to basic project management fundamentals: good, thorough preparation and planning before implementation, in addition to outsourcing data auditing to validate the project.

According to Warren, the benefits include faster, more reliable backups, the capacity to handle future growth, reliable restores and successful interoperability. -With the PX720 in place, automated, manageable 24x7 data backup is possible without interrupting operations." Warren adds, -the only human involvement now is moving the tapes offsite". This reduction in time equates to a reduction from AU$21,000 per year, per IT employee on backup (approximately three hours per day) to just AU$3,500 (or half an hour per day) -- a saving of 83 percent.

Despite this, Deakin can't afford to rest on its laurels. With current storage requirements growing at a predicted 33 percent per year, a further review is underway in partnership with Quantum and thanks to the current solution, Warren says -we are now comfortably in control of our backup".

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