University Breaks All the Storage Rules

The center runs about 30 business-critical applications, including Banner, the universitys online registration software, and Solar, the student database.

"[Solar] has all of [the students] grades, their financials, all their registration info, the course catalog, faculty information—all kinds of good stuff," Allen said.

The center also hosts a 10-node IBM P575 clustered supercomputer, with four or eight CPUs on each node. The supercomputer is being used for research projects such as SURAGRID, or the Southeastern University Research Alliance Grid system. There are 27 of these clustered systems networked among a group of research institutions in the Southeast. The computers are linked into a grid system to share a massive amount of computing power if needed.

GSU uses Spectrum as its financial system, PeopleSofts human resources application, a Novell backbone for the schools e-mail services and a number of other applications.

"On the servers, were running Windows, Solaris 8 and 10, Unix, GroupWise for e-mail and StorageLocker," Allen said. Storage­Locker allows students and staff members to store a predesignated amount of data on the network storage machines.

The center even provides access to the Georgia Public Library System, Allen said, so that students can borrow books from other libraries if the GSU library doesnt have the right book at the right time.

"This is the heartbeat of the university," Allen said. "This is where it all happens. We monitor access to the Internet; we monitor whats coming in and whats going out."

Modest beginnings

The GSU data center, situated on the first floor of its downtown location, was never intended to be the computing center it now is. Its location was lent to the IT department by the campus library, which had been using the space as a book repository.

To help power the systems and applications it hosts, the center once relied heavily on batteries—big batteries.

"We had a whole bunch of APC Symmetra [batteries] all over the data center, and we had two, three or four racks connected to each Symmetra," said Allen. "There was no such thing as an EPO [electrical power-off] button because when you hit the EPO, all it did was make all the UPSes come on."

Staff members also were storing batteries, which carries risk.

"We needed to get out of the battery business," Allen said. At the same time the university was growing, its computing requirements were increasing. Allen and Assistant Data Center Manager Melissa Lamoureux saw that they needed to increase the power intake.

"I started looking around, and I found the Active Power CoolAir [compressed air] UPS—no batteries involved, no storage, no maintenance, a lot of cost savings. You could get it on an annual usage plan. You didnt have to buy it. So we got a 100-kva, 80-kw unit. We put it in about 18 months ago," Allen said.

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