The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) began its e-learning service to distributecourseware content, hold forum discussions, and support interactions between studentsand professors. Rolled out in May 2000, it was an immediate success. By July 2003, thenumber of online courses in NTU jumped to 6,957, accounting for approximately 90 percentof the NTU course curriculum.

edveNTUre’s IT infrastructure grew to include a dizzying array of Sun, HP, IBM and SGIservers, each with their own internal disk storage and backup utilities. There were moreand more servers to manage and it became increasing difficult for operators to attend toindividual server backup within the growing server farm. In short, edveNTUre had a consid-erable storage management challenge.

“Instead of managing individual server storage, we needed a more cost-effective way togrow storage in a managed networked environment based on content usage or demand,”says Lee Chye Seng, Deputy Director (Emerging Technologies).

To accomplish this goal NTU needed to redesign using a storage-centric architecture for itse-learning environment. That meant looking into storage area network (SAN) technology,and NTU chose EMC.

“Choosing EMC was not done on a whim. Rather, there was a detailed and exhaustive processof due diligence,” says Associate Professor Daniel Tan, Director, Centre for EducationalDevelopment (CED).

A intensive selection process beginsWith the problems, needs, and challenges identified and a probable generic solution inmind, discussions with Sun, HP, IBM, Compaq (before the HP-Compaq merger), EMC,Hitachi, Xiotech, StorageTek, Quantum, and other storage vendors were initiated. MeetingNTU’s stringent service level agreement (SLA) requirements was of critical importance.

“For high availability, the key measure was data accessibility, and in the event of any datacorruption or disaster, the infrastructure had to allow immediate data accessibility and the

Customer Profile

An EMC SAN helps create a storage-centric architecture for an e-learning environment

Nanyang Technological University

startup of applications,” says Tan. “On performance, the ability to not only handle a normalsteady state of operations, but also to scale at random to meet unpredictable flash work-loads and demands was crucial.”

Concurrently, a project to upgrade to the enterprise version of Blackboard (version 5.0, level3) was initiated in September 2001. It aimed to integrate the back-end Student InformationSystem with a user-friendly front-end application for professors and students. Fully awarethat storage resources would be stretched to the limit due to higher user demand and support for rich-content types, NTU requested SAN-based storage from vendors for evaluation.

EMC was the fastest to respond and delivered an EMC Symmetrix® system with a total of450 gigabytes useable disk space. The prompt response by EMC was viewed favorably.

“Other storage vendors also proposed SAN solutions that matched EMC in terms of technicalspecifications,” says Lee. “However, the majority were not able to provide an evaluation unitin time to stress test under actual production conditions.”

The evaluation system allowed NTU to have an in-depth, hands-on testing of EMC’s claims.The EMC system was placed under an immediate load/stress test in NTU’s production serverenvironment during which time 1.2 million webpage views per week is not uncommon.

“EMC Symmetrix stood tall and ran uneventfully with high reliability and robust performance,”says Lee. “In short, EMC storage has been able to provide good performance, resilience,security, and reliability in data access, retrieval, and storage.”

NTU, however, was not unforgiving to latecomers. Another vendor did manage to send anevaluation unit a few months later. However, EMC’s system reigned supreme as tests showedlower performance with the disk writing process of the competing vendor’s product—eventhough the product features looked promising during the presentation and demonstrations.

Support becomes another valued benefitEMC’s level of support has also pleased NTU.

“We were very pleased with the prompt response time to calls and the customer service-orientedattitude and professionalism shown by the EMC support team,” states Koh Soo Ngor, Manager,E-Learning Systems & Applications.

In fact, the EMC support team took it one step further by actually owning a problem whenit came about—even in a multivendor situation.

“They would send engineers to investigate whenever any technical problem with the evalu-ation unit occurred, and either resolve the problem themselves or help the other vendorresolve the situation,” says Koh.

As a result of these positive experiences, NTU acquired two Symmetrix DMX™ systems with2.7 terabytes useable disk space, the full suite of storage management software, and one 64-port SAN director.

Reaping the rewardsInstead of being bogged down by routine maintenance issues, the EMC setup has stream-lined operations and allowed NTU to concentrate more on value-added tasks.

“A superior alternative to performing multiple backups for individual servers and monitor-ing each server’s storage consumption, the centralized backup, along with the data andsystem management tools, now leverage the productivity of our system administrators,”says Koh.

www.EMC.com

In addition, NTU is able to provide smooth, responsive, and stable data access for alle-learning services. If a server fails, the EMC platform is able to immediately kick-startanother available off-the-shelf server, attach a copy of the application’s storage volume toit, and resume that service. As a result, unplanned downtime has been greatly minimized.

Information management is much easier as well. From a single management console EMCControlCenter™ software enables NTU to centrally monitor and manage storage growth,which greatly facilitates capacity planning.

“Through this functionality, we always have an accurate ‘big picture’ of what is happeningwithin the system,” states Koh.

EMC storage management software has also helped NTU consolidate and manage disparate multivendor server storage systems and tighten security. With bundled securityfeatures like zoning and LUN masking, EMC has made it safer to house important data within a SAN environment–rather than on individual server storage disks. NTU feels thatthe entire migration to EMC’s SAN infrastructure has been smooth and hassle-free.

“EMC is committed to interoperability in a multiple operating systems environment, and theproduct delivered as promised,” says Koh.

An excellent return on investmentAlthough NTU is a non-profit institution, significant ROI was gained through an enhancedreputation for reliable online learning services and facilities; a reduction of scheduled andunscheduled downtime; high availability of e-learning services; and the minimization ofunproductive man hours related to managing individual server storage.

Future watchDespite its successes, NTU is not sitting on its laurels. It is moving ahead to improve theresilience of its storage facilities.

In the next phase of its SAN project, NTU will look at deploying EMC Symmetrix RemoteData Facility (SRDF®) to copy production data in real time and on-the-fly to a remoteSymmetrix DMX system located at NTU’s business continuity planning site. This would provide a disaster recovery setup for the university’s mission-critical e-learning services inthe event of emergencies such as unforeseen power outages or fire.

NTU’s positive experiences with EMC have also made it view EMC as a long-term strategictechnology partner.

“We have full confidence that EMC will continue to provide technically strong and soundstorage solutions able to meet our growing demands and requirements,” says Tan.“Choosing EMC was the classical case of ‘doing the right thing right.’”

“We have full confidence that EMC will continue to provide technically strong andsound storage solutions able to meet our growing demands and requirements.Choosing EMC was the classical case of ‘doing the right thing right.’”

Daniel Tan

Associate Professor and Director, Centre for Educational Development (CED)

www.EMC.com

EMC CorporationHopkinton Massachusetts01748-9103 1-508-435-1000 In North America 1-866-464-7381

EMC2 EMC, SRDF, and Symmetrix are registeredtrademarks and EMC ControlCenter, EMCAutomated Networked Storage, Symmetrix DMX,TimeFinder, and where information lives aretrademarks of EMC Corporation. Other trademarksare the property of their respective owners.

© 2003 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Produced in the USA. 9/03. L1028Customer Profile