Wright State University

Providing for Data Protection and Faster Backups with Sun

Named after Orville and Wilbur Wright, the inventors of powered flight, Wright State University continues their tradition of innovation. A rich and dynamic community of nearly 17,000 students, Wright State offers more than 100 undergraduate degrees and nearly 50 Ph.D., master’s and professional degrees, and its School of Medicine is home to the nation’s first civilian aerospace medicine program. From research to community collaboration to workforce development, Wright State University reinvests a wealth of resources in the Miami Valley region and Ohio. Its close ties with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and collaborations with leading local industries support existing businesses and spawn new endeavors by offering research opportunities, state-of-the-art technology and cross-disciplinary resources. In fact, Wright State ranks as one of Ohio’s top state universities in terms of research funding. Whether it’s preparing students to take their place in our ever-changing world, conducting research that can improve our lives, or partnering with local communities and businesses, Wright State University is making an impact, both locally and globally. Visit our web site for more information.

Listen to the Audio

Customer Challenges

Encrypt heterogeneous data
Accelerate system backups
Support increasing storage requirements in a cost-effective way

Solution

Wright State University deployed a Sun StorageTek encryption and tape backup solution to archive and protect University data while achieving performance improvements and reducing data center costs.

Business Results

Simple, reliable data encryption that complies with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS)
Increased backup speeds and tape capacity
Built-in scalability so the university can meet increasing storage requirements and minimize data center costs

Products and Services

Story Details

Every year, more than 17,000 students attend classes at Wright State University. Not only do these people trust that the school will help to prepare them for a successful future, students and faculty also entrust the university with sensitive data that includes financial information, medical records, and transcripts. By 2007, the university looked to modify its storage solution to meet changing requirements that came about from growth, and mandates such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The existing storage solution supported more than 150 servers on campus—a mixture of systems that run the Solaris, UNIX, Novell NetWare, and Windows Server operating systems. These servers backed up data to enterprise and modular storage arrays. A Sun StorageTek 9310 tape library, managed with the Sun StorageTek Automated Cartridge System Library Software (ACSLS) Manager software, was utilized for long-term storage. Although it provided for reliable backups, the 9310 tape library was nearing capacity and the end of its life cycle. Increasing demands for data security, storage capacity and performance led the university to look for a solution that could support encryption, exponential data growth and faster backup speeds.

" The Sun StorageTek tape library systems have long been the standard by which all others are compared, and there’s a very good reason for that. We’ve been very happy with our Sun storage solutions for a number of years, and we expect to be happy with them into the future. I can't speak highly enough of Sun's field engineering people. They are our teammates and trusted advisors even when there are no problems. "

— Phil Neff, Associate Director of Computing and Telecommunications Services, Wright State University

Wright State opted to first deploy an encryption solution, and then focus on replacing its 9310 tape library. After evaluating several products, the university purchased four Sun StorageTek T10000 tape drives and data cartridges, and a Sun StorageTek Crypto Key Management Station (KMS) through Sun Advantage Partners Datalink and Dewpoint. The T10000 tape drives support on-device encryption and the data cartridges provide for secure off campus data storage while the KMS system utilizes AES-256 encryption and is designed to comply with the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 certification. To help with the deployment, the university engaged Sun Professional Services to provide Sun StorageTek Key Management Station (KMS) Implementation Services.

After the encryption solution was in production for several months, Wright State purchased two additional T10000 tape drives and a 3,000-slot Sun StorageTek SL8500 modular library system with four robots for redundancy through Datalink. Built to handle future data storage requirements, the SL8500 library can scale to accommodate 56 petabytes of data and 70,000 tapes—including those for the university's older Sun StorageTek T9840B and T9840C tape drives.

Commenting on the university's decision to deploy a Sun technology-based encryption and backup solution, Phil Neff, Associate Director of Computing and Telecommunications Services at Wright State University explains, “We chose a solution from Sun for several reasons. We've had good experience with Sun. The Sun StorageTek SL8500 modular library gave us faster performance for a lower price and a better, more open development path than competitive solutions. The Sun StorageTek T10000 tape drives also meet our requirements for data encryption and faster backup windows. Plus, we can still use our older archived tapes.”

IT personnel from Wright State worked with Sun consultants to install and configure the SL8500 tape library and additional T10000 tape drives. The team configured the Veritas NetBackup application, which runs on an existing Solaris 9 OS-based Sun Fire V240 server, to perform backups. In addition, ACSLS Manager software was configured to manage the new library. After extensive testing, the team activated the SL8500 library and moved the existing tape drives and media from the 9310 tape library to the new system. The solution was then in full production in less than half a day. And because the migration took place between backup windows, no conflicts or service interruptions occurred. “The implementation of the Sun StorageTek SL8500 library was quite easy,” says Neff. “We stayed within our budget and the implementation time was faster than we had expected.”

The new solution has helped Wright State University overcome its storage issues. “We have certainly realized higher throughout rates with the Sun StorageTek T10000 tape drives,” notes Neff. “Even with our storage requirements increasing nearly 200 percent last year, the T10000 tape drives have allowed us to complete our backups on the schedules we had before. And because the T10000 tape drives offer greater capacity, we've been able to maintain the same number of tapes, even though the amount of data has increased.”

In the future, the university expects to expand on its Sun technology-based storage solution by adding an off-site data recovery center that will connect to the SL8500 library over a Fibre Channel network. “Sun has provided us with a very reliable and dependable storage solution,” concludes Neff. “We know that when we make a schedule for backups and recoveries, it’s going to be met. When we look for data, everything is there. Sun is probably the easiest vendor we've ever worked with, and it lives up to its reputation for building highly reliable and usable systems. The ACSLS software, working in combination with the Veritas NetBackup solution, has also given us what appears to be so far an infallible solution for backing up and restoring our data.”