VMWARE CASE STUDY

VMware brought Åbo Akademi’s storage solutions to the modern age – easy maintenance and fast information access please both the maintenance and the users WEB SITE www.abo.fi Åbo Akademi, founded in 1918, is Finland’s third oldest university. Previously, the university had several physical INDUSTRY Higher education servers which made the maintenance challenging. If there were issues with the physical server, data transfer to another server LOCATION took a long time. The university was already using VMware’s Turku, Vaasa virtualization solution, VSphere 6 and VCenter Enterprise Edition, and VMware VSAN was chosen as a hyper convergent KEY CHALLENGES solution to function as the new storage system. This way, the • The support of the old university gained a modular, easily upgradeable and extremely storage system was ending, and it had to updated e cient storage environment which is simple to control.

• The whole storage system Åbo Akademi is Finland’s third oldest university which operates in Turku, Vaasa and cannot be updated at once Pietarsaari. In addition, the university has activity for example in Helsinki. The university • A limited amount of IT has 5 500 First Degree students and 820 graduate students. The sta consists of personnel to do an extensive 1 250 employees, of which 660 work in teaching and research. All of the university’s update applications, such as o ce programs and dozens of calculus and other specialist • Softwares in constant use – programs used in research work, function in the university’s data network, which is used the updates had to be done by students and sta on a daily basis. promptly The Challenge as the best of three alternatives. SOLUTION Åbo Akademi has two data centres, in Åbo Akademi was already Turku and Vaasa. In 2015, the storage The solution using VMWare vCenter and infrastructure of the data centres was Åbo Akademi wanted to upgrade its VMware vSphere 6. The becoming obsolete and had to be outdated storage solution to a modern university started using VSAN replaced. The storage system had been and easy-to-administer one. After storage system, which made built according to old standards which studying di erent storage solutions, Åbo meant that physical frame servers, fi ber controlling the data system Akademi had three options, of which switches and a storage system using NAS VMware VSAN solution was chosen as more simple when manual and SAN discs were being used. the best one. VSAN is a hyper convergent maintenance was left out. Now environment, in which the server, Other servers had been virtualized the storage system can be virtualization and storage solutions are using VMware vCenter and vSphere controlled from the same place merged and can be controlled from one 6 Enterprise Edition but the storage as the rest of the data system, place. system was functioning separately. This easily and e ectively. meant that its management and changes “In the VSAN environment we were was tough and time consuming to able to get rid of separate disk systems BUSINESS BENEFITS conduct because of the manual updates. and storage network switches. VSAN • Speed and reliability Expansion of the environment would is modular, easy to expand and highly have been expensive and di cult. e cient. In addition, the controlling of • Easy maintenance saves the environment becomes easier when working time For the new storage solution, a modern everything can be controlled from the system with a longer life span was • E cient, modular system is same place,” says Åbo Akademi’s head of required. After analysis, the software- easy to extend if necessary ICT Björn Pundars. based VMware VSAN solution was chosen • No service breaks • Policy based storage system management VMWARE CASE STUDY

Åbo Akademi’s current servers Business Results & Benefi ts “The most important outcome have some operating life left, and Changing over to the hyper convergent is that after adapting the new reconstructing all of the servers at once VSAN environment has brought notable storage system the users have would not have been benefi cial because cost savings, for now ordinary x86 been giving feedback about of cost reasons. In a hyper convergent equipment can be used in the storage how the services work faster.” environment, the old storage servers system instead of external disk systems can be used up, but when renewing the and storage network. The modular Björn Pundars, ICT-manager servers, they can be easily updated to use Åbo Akademi system can easily be broadened, more modern technology. according to current need.

Compared to the previously used fi bre- VSAN has improved the reliability of Åbo based solution VSAN is more a ordable Akademi’s storage system and eased the and easier to use. VMWARE FOOTPRINT time management of the IT personnel. The system has not crashed even under • VMware® VSphere 6 “VSAN saves money on the unit costs, heavy load. Enterprise Edition™ since for storage we can use ordinary x86 rack servers. The previous storage system • VMware® VCenter Enterprise “The new storage system has now been required specialised architecture and in use for six months, and every single Edition™ equipment, and the cost was higher.” day we notice how easy it is to maintain • VMware VSAN™ Updating the storage system was easy and how liable it is. It takes less of with e orts just from the university’s working time to do things compared to APPLICATIONS VIRTUALIZED own IT personnel. Since the update, the the old system.” All the internally maintained maintenance has been easy and quick applications, such as to handle. Åbo Akademi was already Future prospects using VMware vCenter server platform, Åbo Akademi has two data centres. • Windows 7 and newer ones, on which the virtualized vSphere Turku’s data centre was updated last year up until version 10 environments were run. However, the and this year it will be the turn for Vaasa’s • Microsoft O ce, Adobe storage space could not be administered data centre. The university is gradually programs and a countless with them. giving up spinning hard disks and is amount of applications used “Our old storage system consisted of adapting faster and more capacious Flash in research work, such as physical servers which were di cult disks that represent SSD technology. In mathematics and statistics to administer, and which was done the intermediate stage, the university will be using a hybrid system, which uses programs separately from the rest of the IT system. If the server got overloaded for some both the spinning and the SSD disks. • Databases reason, the load alterations had to done “Adapting the use of SSD disks will delete manually. With the help of VSAN, our the storage bottlenecks. The great speed storage system will be connected to and storage capacity of the SSD disks will the rest of the infrastructure. We were enhance the use of the storage space by looking for a high quality tool that would using deduplication and compressing, help us control the whole system easily. among other things,” says Pundars. Faulty tools would simply waste our time,” Pundars says.

The transition to the new system went smoothly. VMware was already familiar “The new storage system and widely used at the university’s data has now been in use for six centre, especially as the virtualization months, and every single day base for the servers. we notice how easy it is to maintain and how liable it is. “We carried out the changeover of the It takes less of working time to storage system during the summer, do things compared to the old because that is a quiet time at the system.” university. The main outcome was that after transitioning into the new storage Björn Pundars, ICT-manager system the users have given feedback Åbo Akademi about how the service has worked faster,” Pundars smiles.

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