HELPDESKSAN update 30th, March 2005
Meeting was opened by Linda McCormick(Computing Service), who invited Rolly Gilmour (Computing Service) to give a short presentation to the group.
An introduction was made by Rolly Gilmour, which covered the following areas:
- Overview of the need for the system.
- Model that was being sought.
- Factors to be addressed.
- Issues resulting from the last two points.
- Review of decisions taken.
- Consequent implementation process.
- Finally, an overview of the system's architecture.
System Review and Demonstration
A more detailed review of the system procured was then provided by Derek Higgins. A demonstration was then given of how to create a "virtual disk", copying file store to it, transferring data within the SAN system and deleting of the original disk. The strengths of the system were transparent in this brief, live presentation.
Rolly Gilmour then gave a brief talk on the possible roll-out of the system to Departments / Faculties. Initially, the allocation will be in the order of 1 Terra Byte per Department / Faculty, but agreement needs to be sought with regards to the mechanics of its distribution and access.
A cost structure is currently being developed, with the basic premise being affordability. However, if Departments / Faculties see a demand for this service expansion will need to be fully costed and paid for. At this time, a costing model is being developed upon the premise that capital costs will be borne by central funding, with individual Departments / Faculties covering the consumable costs (for example additional file store).
Jim McClure: will OJEC regulations need to be followed for all future developments?
Rolly Gilmour: Initially (at least) expansion investment would be at a cost that would be below OJEC procurement thresholds. We also have a framework agreement with IBM, for storage components that will be reviewed annually.
Ian Brennan: what is the maximum storage limit of the SAN?
Rolly Gilmour: The SVC clusters we have are licensed to virtualise up to 2 Peta Bytes of back end storage. This equates to a cluster wide extent size of 512GigaBytes (512GB x 4Million extents)
Kenny Stevenson: are there directory issues, that is will multiple active directories be possible?
Rolly Gilmour: "Forest Trusts", thou we would hope to have OUs or Domains a more attractive proposition.
Kenny Stevenson: Is testing being carried out for "failover"?
Rolly Gilmour: Part of the ongoing development process at this time.
David Martin: Is there a timetable for going live on campus?
Rolly Gilmour: Due to the ongoing testing related to the previous question, the current expectation would be over the summer break.
At this point, it was decided to break for lunch and for further questions to be fielded then.
Derek Higgins (requires several seconds to download)
Finally, Linda McCormick informed those present that the Support Community Workshop was set for Thursday the 11th of August.