De Montfort University has chosen
Novell Open
Enterprise Server 2 as the foundation for its IT infrastructure
for students and staff. The Novell system, built on the SuSE Linux
Enterprise Server SP1 operating system, is designed to reduce
storage costs, and using Novell's Xen virtualisation technology,
improve resilience and flexibility.
The university is one of the largest in the UK, with more than
20,000 students and 3,000 staff across two campuses in Leicester.
It offers 400 undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
Because the IT infrastructure at De Montfort had been managed by
individual departments, a number of different systems had developed
independently of each other, with poor integration. A lack of
centralisation for data and services and fragmentation of the
infrastructure made it hard for students and staff to work and
share information effectively.
Novell's network management software, together with the Linux
operating system, created a single point of access to applications
and information for all staff and students.
Following the successful implementation of Novell Open
Enterprise Server, Novell eDirectory and Novell Identity Manager a
few years ago, the university had a stable platform that permitted
all users to access all relevant resources from any computer. As
the next step, the university wanted to improve the flexibility,
efficiency and scalability of the infrastructure - with tiered data
storage - and to begin to exploit server virtualisation
technologies.
Last year, De Montfort finished implementing a three-node Linux
cluster with Novell Cluster Services on Novell Open Enterprise
Server 2 on Intel-based servers. The cluster will provide file and
print services to a growing number of students and academics as the
university migrates from NetWare. The university worked with IT
services firm NDS8 to implement the new system.
"The main driver for upgrading to the new version of Novell Open
Enterprise Server was to push the adoption of Linux at the core of
our infrastructure," said Chris Semmens, IT team leader at De
Montfort University. "The usual cost argument for Linux is
relatively unimportant from our point of view it's much more about
scalability, security, robustness, high performance and the ability
to run on practically any hardware."
The university is improving storage capacity and performance by
automating the movement of inactive data from high-performance
disks to lower-cost disks based on preset policies. After a set
period, the Novell system archives inactive data from the
fibre-channel disks on the university's Hitachi SAN to the SATA
disks on a newly implemented IBM System Storage DS3300 storage
array with iSCSI connections.
"Dynamic Storage Technology in Novell Open Enterprise Server has
given us a transparent second tier of storage, enabling us to
reduce the cost of storing inactive data in a way that is
transparent to the users," said Semmens. "We then only need to back
up the data from the lower-cost devices on a monthly basis, as it
is largely static."
Stored data could be from any of the university's activities.
Admin staff use the system for administrative work, students use it
to develop coursework and lecturers to develop course materials. In
terms of the actual data, this includes word processing documents,
financial spreadsheets and presentation documents.
De Montfort is now testing Xen virtualisation on SuSE Linux
Enterprise, to create a Novell iPrint system to improved printing
speed and resilience. "Virtualisation will allow us to abstract
services from the hardware on which they run, enabling
non-disruptive infrastructure upgrades and improved disaster
recovery options," said Semmens. "The Novell solution has improved
the resilience of core services and enabled us to adopt Linux at
the centre of our infrastructure."
Using open source Xen virtualisation technology integrated in
SuSE Linux Enterprise, De Montfort was also able to upgrade its
infrastructure with minimal or even zero impact on users, Semmens
said. He added that virtualisation enabled faster recovery in the
event of a disaster, as well as allowing more efficient use of
hardware, power and floor space.
Novell said virtualisation of the Linux operating system lowers
hardware, maintenance and electrical costs. It also helps use
excess storage capacity and improve response times by balancing
computing loads across server system resources at peak times.
Meanwhile, applications could be moved between hardware systems
without altering them, according to the software firm.
So the Linux, Novell and virtualisation technologies would have
knock-on environmental benefits for the university, Semmens said.
"The university is committed to reducing its carbon footprint, and
virtualisation will have an important role to play. With Xen, we
will reduce the total number of servers we run, and technologies
such as Novell ZENworks Orchestrator will enable us to move
services and power down servers when demand falls, helping to
reduce power consumption."