"We have a mix of applications and operating systems," said Sommer Sharp, systems programmer. "We are a big believer in finding the right application for the job, so whether it runs under LINUX, Windows -- whatever -- it doesn't matter. Use what does the job best." Having such a heterogeneous network can cause problems, however, especially in management and backup. "It was getting to the point where we knew we needed to do something," said Sharp. "We were contemplating building our own SAN from scratch. It was a task I wasn't looking forward to, but I felt it might be the only way to get the job done affordably."
"The StoreAge SVM is great," said Sharp. "I'm glad we didn't do it on our own. Off-the-shelf SAN managers can't do a fraction of what the SVM does. We have SAN management, but also all the other capabilities such as replication and snapshot. Now, whenever we buy servers, they're just boot servers -- and we add whatever storage we want to the storage pool."
System performance has improved as well, said Sharp. "Whenever we add new storage or re-provision storage, the slowest part of the process is the operating system. It takes the operating system longer to recognize the new storage than it does to provision it."
The biggest advantage to using StoreAge, however, has been the way in which it streamlines data for the college. "I create a snapshot of my data and then run my tape backup against that image," said Sharp. "It cuts the backup time in half and eliminates any impact on my production servers." Similarly, the database administrators at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine use StoreAge to snapshot database replicas for testing and patching before commitment to production environments.
