Presented to the Common Solutions Group at Georgetown University on May 12, 2010 (http://stonesoup.org)

1. Storage Strategies at
The University of Iowa
May 12, 2010

2. Central File Storage
• Individuals: 1-5 GB
• Departments: 1 GB per FTE
Base
Entitlement
• Asynchronous replication to identical
system at remote data center
4 Hour Recovery
Objectives
• < 1 hour of downtime in the past year99.97% Uptime
• 33K of 37K eligible users
89%
Participation
2

3. The Effect
“One price fits all” network file
storage
Lower-cost network file
storage
Lowest-cost bare server
storage
3

4. Storage Tiers
High
Performance
Enterprise SAN
Central File
Storage
Low Cost SAN
Target Users Centrally
managed servers
End users or
distributed servers
Distributed
servers
Funding Model Centrally funded Base entitlement,
pay for more
Pay for use
Monthly Price
per Gigabyte
N/A $0.12 – $0.25 $0.03 – $0.14
http://its.uiowa.edu/spa/storage/
4

5. 5

6. Moving Forward
Interviewed
partners,
peers
Categorized
storage
Analyzing
data
Storage
Services
Roadmap
• 10 peer institutions
• 17 campus units
• 2.7 petabytes of campus storage
6

7. Campus Storage by Provider
Information
Technology
Services
42%
College of
Engineering
27%
Institute for
Clinical and
Translational
Science
12%
College of Public
Health
8%
UI Libraries
4%
Other
7%
7

8. Storage by University Mission
Administration &
Overhead
35%
Research
51%
Teaching
11%
Public Service
3%
8

9. Storage by Access Type
Backup
72%
Online
24%
Archive
4%
9

10. Issues
Research storage
• Fragmented
• Poor data protection
Backup storage
• Inefficient
• No central service
Archival storage
• Few options
• Shifts to online or
backup storage
10
Cost

11. Possible Next Steps
Identify and promote research solutions
Build central backup service
Build, promote archival solutions
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12. Lessons Learned
Valuable
data
Invaluable
process
Built on
existing
community
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