canheit 2012 building the digital university. disaster recovery through cooperation

CANHEIT 2012

Building the Digital University

Disaster RecoveryThrough Cooperation

We had a Dream - also a Nightmare

•Where we have been

•Where we are today

•Challenges

•Where we are going

Disaster RecoveryThrough Cooperation

Who We Are

•St. Thomas University in Fredericton

•Mount Allison University in Sackville

•Université de Moncton in Moncton

We had a Dream... Or Nightmare

•How would we cope?

•How would we get there?

•Who would pay for it?

•Who would join us

Where We Have Been

•ECN

•Datatel cooperation

•Virtualized servers at one datacentre

The ECN•The NB/PEI Educational Computer Network

•Forty Years (!) of cooperation - Yes... There were data networks 40 years ago... Maybe smoke signals???

•Great Organizational model

•Great Financial Model

•Network, Spam filtering, software licensing etc.

ECN Network

St. Thomas at Fredericton

Mount Allisonat Sackville

Université de Moncton at

Moncton

Fredericton to Sackville:250km or < 10ms

Fredericton to Sackville:250km or < 10ms

Datatel Cooperation

• MUSIC Consortium from 15 years ago

• Workorder system run from MTA

• MTA makes customizations etc.

• STU has provided analyst expertise

• Single team - lots of savings

VMs at one site

• MTA early adopter of VM technology

• STU brought capital to the table

• MTA built datacentre, has staff

• Two Universities (120 VMs) in a rack

• Great efficiencies

Where We Were 2010

• Virtualized Servers working very well

• Current agreement works and is model for small university cooperation

• Very productive, staff train and work together

• Huge positive environmental impact

• Management shares common vision

Timeline to 2010

1970

2010

1980

1990

2000

ECN Network

Datatel

Shared Datacentre

Challenges

• NO credible disaster recovery capability

• Rapidly growing storage requirements (memory and disk)

• Server Hosting/Maintenance Agreement ending 2012

• Current Infrastructure EOL in 2012

Where are we going?

• Original agreement set to expire in 2012

• Refresh of current infrastructure (with NO DR capability) would cost about $250,000.00

• Background of rapid growth in storage and to a lesser extent RAM requirements

KIP Funds

•STU Applied for KIP funds for several IT projects

•Received 485K

•Gave us funds to BOTH refresh datacentre AND establish DR facility

DR Site•Looked at several options

•STU - didn’t want to build a machine room

•MTA - didn’t want to expand a machine room

•UNB - in the process of gutting a machine room

•Private rackspace vendors - problem was getting data to them (cost of bandwidth)

•Best solution - a University on the ECN network

•Ended up at Université de Moncton.

D/R Process• Technical Staff did considerable research

framing the problem and looking for a solution

• We issued an RFI - received 5 responses

• Pursued discussions with one respondent to further define plans

• Issued an RFQ to finalize numbers

• Bulletproof was chosen as the partner

Adopted Solution

MTA - Refresh UdeM - New

Servers

Storage

Automatic Replicationover ECN Network

(magic)

Engaging UdeM

• We are excited about engaging another partner, in this case to house equipment

• Offer on the table for UdeM to put a rack at MTA

• Leverages ECN investments

• $500/month + Power

Dell Equallogic• Sticker Shock - but it’s “ALL IN” and easy

to manage...

• Atomic Unit is the SAN

• Simple and powerful

• Replication is part of the package

• Peace of Mind (priceless)

Key Points• New data centre infrastructure PLUS

DR site

• Five years maintenance up front

• Retain leadership position in IT

• New partner U de M, more welcome

• We sleep better now - much better!

... But there’s more

• We’ve been approached by two other institutions, both wish to eliminate data centres, both have received quotes from commercial providers.

• Our costs are about 1/2 the commercial providers

• We must be doing something right!

New Timeline

1970201

0198

0199

0200

0

ECN Network

Datatel

Shared Datacentre

2015

Datacentre + D/R

New Partners

The Future• (1 year) We hope to be hosting servers for at

least four institutions - Huge win financially, environmentally and politically.

• (1 year) ECN plans to conduct a review to explore further cooperation/consolidation

• (3-4 years) be positioned to take advantage of what options exist - ECN Datacentre? Commercial providers? Rebuild of current sites? "the cloud"... Who knows.

Further out...Forecast is cloudy....

But we will be ready for it.

Dilbert• ...of course there's a relevant

Dilbert...

• We are too cheap to pay $45 to show you the cartoon, so see cartoon for 25/May/2012 at http://www.dilbert.com

CANHEIT 2010

2010... Nearby...

Questions ?

? ? ?? ? ?