Challenge: Brace for the threat of hurricanes and other potential disasters by proactively protecting university operations and infrastructure. Solution: Implement a robust disaster recovery plan with NetApp FAS3210 and FAS2040 storage systems in primary and second- ary data centers and VMware for virtualization.

1. Joint Customer Story
McNeese State University
Boosts Disaster Preparedness
with NetApp and VMware
Another NetApp
solution delivered by:
Customer Profile sity students fleeing from Hurricane
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
McNeese State University is located in Katrina in 2005, McNeese faced a hur-
Industry southwestern Louisiana in Lake Charles, ricane closer to home when Hurricane
Higher education with its freshwater marshes, scenic riv- Rita struck the Louisiana coast later
ers, and warm sandy beaches. The uni- that year. The category 5 hurricane
The Challenge versity, founded in 1939, has a current caused $12 billion in damage along the
Brace for the threat of hurricanes enrollment of almost 9,000 students. At Gulf Coast and devastating damage to
and other potential disasters by McNeese, students from 56 parishes, McNeese campus facilities and infra-
proactively protecting university 34 states, and 49 countries can choose structure and disruption to university
operations and infrastructure. from more than 75 undergraduate and operations.
The Solution graduate degree programs. McNeese is
“Just before the hurricane hit, our IT
Implement a robust disaster a member of the University of Louisiana
department relocated operations to
recovery plan with NetApp® System, one of the largest public higher
Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, but
FAS3210 and FAS2040 storage education systems in the United States.
maintaining operations was a struggle
systems in primary and second- The Challenge without an offsite disaster recovery site,”
ary data centers and VMware® Protecting Operations and says Chad Thibodeaux, chief informa-
for virtualization. Infrastructure tion officer, McNeese State University.
McNeese State University is committed “We had hoped to resume classes the
Benefits
to excellence in teaching and research following week, but the McNeese cam-
Established critical replication
across its 500-acre campus, including pus and most of Southwestern Louisiana
between onsite and offsite data
68 buildings. The campus is located a lost power for two weeks. In addition,
centers for disaster recovery
mere 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, nearly every building on our campus
Reduced physical servers
which offers a great getaway for hard- sustained damages, ultimately costing
from 30 to 5 through server
working students, but also the potential tens of millions of dollars to repair.”
virtualization
each year for hurricanes. Through the remarkable determination of
Accelerated recovery times
the McNeese community, the university
from hours to minutes Although the university provided shelter reopened and resumed a portion of its
for New Orleans residents and univer- classes five weeks later.

2. “With a robust disaster recovery
strategy backed by NetApp and
VMware capabilities, our IT department
is better prepared to manage the
data center and maintain university
operations in the event of another
hurricane or other disaster.”
Chad Thibodeaux
Chief Information Officer, McNeese State University
The university’s recovery effort demon- The Solution NetApp SnapMirror and VMware vCenter
strated its resilience while sparking a Rapid Deployment and Quick ROI Site Recovery Manager to rapidly recover
commitment to restructuring its disaster McNeese turned to NetApp Professional data and solidify the plan.
recovery plan. The phased project Services for assistance in implementing
involved establishing disk-based repli- The unified NetApp storage platform,
NetApp FAS3210 storage systems in its
cation processes that would protect running on Data ONTAP® 8.0 operating
onsite data center. NetApp Rapid
university data through a secondary in 7-Mode, offers a new level of flexibility
Deployment Services for Storage Imple-
site, eventually located remotely at a and cost efficiency to the university.
mentation consultants first collaborated
Louisiana Tech University data center. NetApp backup and recovery capabili-
with McNeese storage administrators to
Reliable replication practices would ties provide an important level of data
design the layout of the storage control-
help the university maintain operations protection for the university’s six aca-
lers. The NetApp field engineers then
and educational activities in the event of demic colleges, which include Business,
fully configured, tested, and deployed
another disaster. Moving the secondary Education, Engineering and Engineering
the tailored NetApp solution. “Working
data center to a remote location would Technology, Liberal Arts, Nursing, and
with NetApp Professional Services ulti-
also eliminate network outages that Science, plus the William J. Doré, Sr.
mately resulted in rapidly deploying a
resulted from an overzealous raccoon School of Graduate Studies. NetApp
solution that immediately met our needs,
population known to interfere with supports and protects mission-critical
which saved us valuable time and
on-campus electrical circuits. applications such as Blackboard Learn,
money,” says Thibodeaux.
Moodle Course Management System,
McNeese also wanted the new storage The university’s growing VMware virtual and VMware Zimbra® Collaboration
solution to help move its server virtual- server environment, supported by Server supporting 1,500 staff e-mail
ization strategy forward, which would VMware vSphere® 5 and vCenter™, also accounts and 9,000 student accounts,
further enhance the disaster recovery runs on the FAS3210 production storage Web servers, an extensive Red Hat
plan by eliminating most of its physical system. Through the NetApp OnCom- Enterprise Linux® 5 and 6 environment,
servers. Other important storage criteria mand® Virtual Storage Console, the IT and others.
included the flexibility and scalability team uses Virtual Storage Console to
to support future IT projects that would McNeese uses NetApp SnapMirror
protect the local VMware environment.
enable the IT staff to continue to support to replicate university data daily to
The team leverages SnapMirror ® in
the university’s important educational FAS2040 storage systems in the Louisi-
combination with VMware vCenter Site
mission and to do so cost effectively. ana Tech University data center for
Recovery Manager to replicate applica-
The university worked with CDW—a par- disaster recovery purposes, with a
tions to the remote site. Using the inte-
ticipant in the NetApp Partner Program dedicated connection that doesn’t
grated disaster recovery solution, IT
and provider of technology products compete with other network traffic such
automates disaster recovery activities,
and services for business, government, as its campus Internet. SnapMirror net-
prioritizing related workloads. The team
education, and healthcare—to select work compression reduces McNeese’s
can test and verify the disaster recovery
the right storage solution to meet current bandwidth utilization, decreases net-
plan nondisruptively in a separate envi-
and future storage requirements. work costs, accelerates data transfers,
ronment, simulating a disaster and using

3. Primary Data Center Secondary Data Center
Mission-critical Applications
Blackboard Learn
Moodle Course Management System
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6
VMware Zimbra Collaboration Server
VMware vSphere 5
NetApp SnapMirror
NetApp OnCommand VMware Site Recovery Manager
Virtual Storage Console NetApp Snapshot technology
VMware vCenter NetApp SnapRestore
NetApp FAS3210
running on Data ONTAP 8.0 NetApp FAS2040
operating in 7-mode
Figure1) McNeese State University Storage Infrastructure.
The university’s growing VMware virtual server environment supported by VMware vSphere 5 and vCenter runs on the FAS3210 production storage
system. Through the NetApp OnCommand Virtual Storage Console, the IT team uses Virtual Storage Console to protect the local VMware environment.
The team leverages SnapMirror in combination with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to replicate applications to the remote site.
and reduces recovery point objectives data availability on CIFS and NFS data. from 30 to 5, which reduces hardware
(RPOs). The university protects data The NetApp Professional Services team costs while simplifying IT management.
locally with NetApp Snapshot™ and also provided Snapshot configuration Also important, server virtualization fur-
SnapRestore® technologies. on volumes. A complete service handoff ther supports the university’s disaster
that included documentation and recovery plan.
Business Benefits knowledge transfer, combined with free
Rising to a New Level of Disaster NetApp University training, equipped In the past, if a physical server went
Preparedness down, the university typically spent
the McNeese IT staff to maximize
McNeese State University’s core values NetApp data protection and disaster hours rebuilding the operating system
include academic excellence, student recovery capabilities. and reloading data. With NetApp Snap-
success, university and community alli- shot and SnapRestore technologies and
ances, and fiscal responsibility. As a Cost efficiency is also at the center of Virtual Storage Console, it now takes
component of these institutional goals, McNeese’s enhanced disaster recovery only minutes for point-in-time recovery.
the organization is committed to “utiliz- plan. IP-based replication with Snap-
Mirror enables the university to avoid Virtualizing mission-critical applications
ing the role of technology to increase
expensive dual Fibre Channel–to-Ether- on NetApp storage makes it much eas-
the efficiency and effectiveness of
net switches at its primary and secondary ier and faster to bring systems and ser-
campus operations.”
data centers. SnapMirror disk-to-disk vices back up, if needed. “By virtualizing
“With a robust disaster recovery strat- replication also eliminated most of on NetApp storage, even in the extreme
egy backed by NetApp and VMware McNeese’s costly, time-consuming tape case of an evacuation where everyone
capabilities, our IT department is better backup processes. Virtual Storage Con- is scattered, I feel confident that we
prepared to manage the data center sole helps the university achieve greater could continue to provide vital IT services
and maintain university operations in returns on its VMware environment. such as e-mail and learning systems to
the event of another hurricane or other Snapshot and SnapRestore technolo- our instructors, administrators, and
disaster,” stresses Thibodeaux. “We gies accelerate recovery times and students,” notes Thibodeaux.
learned valuable lessons from Hurricane reduce the resource requirements of IT Helping Students and the University
Rita about the importance of investing staff members tasked with recovering Succeed
in the right technologies and establish- inadvertently deleted data. The commitment of the McNeese faculty
ing the best practices that make sure
Additional Protection with Server and staff to excellence in higher educa-
that our vital university systems remain
Virtualization tion remains steadfast. The university
protected no matter what.”
McNeese is achieving additional cost motto of “Excellence with a Personal
Because it used the NetApp Rapid efficiencies and disaster recovery Touch” extends beyond the classroom
Deployment Services for Storage improvements through server virtualiza- to the IT department, where the team
Implementation base service, the uni- tion on NetApp storage, enabled by will continue to respond to the needs of
versity benefited from complete verifi- tight integration between NetApp and students and deliver the innovative ser-
cation testing for hardware and cluster VMware technologies. To date, the uni- vices that help them succeed in the
failover, as well as demonstration of versity has reduced its physical servers 21st-century global economy.

4. “Working with NetApp Professional
Services ultimately resulted in rapidly
deploying a solution that immediately
met our needs, which saved us
valuable time and money.”
Chad Thibodeaux
Chief Information Officer, McNeese State University
“We’ve bounced back from hurricanes,
SOLUTION COMPONENTS
budget cuts, and other significant chal-
lenges with a world-class data center NetApp Products Third-Party Products
that enables us to reduce our IT costs NetApp FAS3210 and FAS2040 Blackboard Learn
while bracing for potential hurricanes with storage systems Moodle Course Management System
tenacity,” says Thibodeaux. “Additionally,
Data ONTAP 8.0 operating in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6
the flexibility and scalability inherent in
7-Mode
NetApp storage will allow us to embark VMware vSphere 5, vCenter
on new IT projects and services that will Snapshot technology
VMware Zimbra Collaboration Server
help us remain competitive in the chang- SnapRestore
ing higher-educational environment.” VMware vCenter Site Recovery
SnapMirror Manager
OnCommand Virtual Storage
Console Partner
CDW
Protocols www.cdw.com
CIFS
NFS
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