We recently teamed up with our good friends at SUSE to build a very high-performing and scalable storage landscape at a fraction of the cost than with traditional storage systems for the Swinburne University of Technology. The challenge that the IT team at Swinburne were facing is how to accommodate the ever-growing need for performance and capacity while sticking to a tight budget. With SUSE Enterprise Storage we have been able to deploy a compelling and affordable solution to support Swinburne’s storage needs. Their new storage platform is fast and flexible, meaning the IT team at Swinburne can support the needs of researchers more effectively. https://aptira.com/swinburne-university-technology/

1. Swinburne University
of Technology
Storage Case Study

2. Who are these
guys? kieran@aptira.com
Kieran Spear: Appstronaut
@spearki

3. Who are these
guys? shunde@aptira.com
Shunde Zhang: Nebularchitectionaut
@shundezhang

4. Overview
1) Who is Aptira?
2) What does Aptira do?
3) Who do we do this for?
4) Swinburne!
5) Aptira & SUSE
6) The Challenge
7) The Solution
8) The Results
9) Q&A

5. Who is Aptira?

6. We are Solutionauts.

8. We design, deploy and manage
cloud solutions to meet the most
demanding applications.

9. What do we do?
Consulting & Managed
Services: Automation, Custom
Development, System
Integration, XaaS, Container
Orchestration, Big Data
OpenStack: Design, Build,
Integrate, Deploy, Operate
Network Services: SDN, NFV,
ONAP
Managed Cloud, Hybrid Cloud
Transform Cloud Technology

10. Aptira
Deployed Clouds for
international telcos, research
institutions and enterprises.
Built NFV/SDN platforms
for telcos and technology providers.
Operating global cloud infrastructure
for a leading IaaS vendor.
Built Big Data business intelligence
platforms.
Each solution is comprehensive and
tailor-madeto suit your
requirements, utilising state of the
art infrastructurecombined with best
practice solutions.
What have we achieved?

11. Trusted worldwide by service providers, government,
educational and enterprise customers of all sizes.

12. Swinburne University of
Technology
Aptira + SUSE Enterprise Storage

13. Swinburne University of Technology is a public university based in
Melbourne, Australia. Swinburne fosters close ties with industry, business
and governmental organisations to help ensure that its degree
programmes and research find practical applications.
It has a reputation for preparing graduates for life in the working world, as
well as for its research in science and technology.

14. Swinburne
University of
Technology
We teamed up with SUSE to
build a very high-performing
and scalable storage
landscape at a fraction of the
cost than we would have been
able to with traditional storage
systems
SUSE

16. Our Partners
We like to partner with
like-minded companies
In SUSE, we have a mutually
complementary portfolio, and
a joint desire to concentrate
on offerings that are
commercially better for
customers
(and drinking
buddies)

17. Swinburne University
of Technology
The Challenge

18. Challenge 1 Advances in technology have
vastly expanded the scope of
the university’s research work,
which now demands greater
compute and storage
resources
Large Requirements

19. Challenge 2 Swinburne is always looking
for ways to help their
researchers work more
effectively, which means
giving them access to
powerful and flexible IT
resources
Efficiency

20. Challenge 3
Latency concerns and data-
sharing restrictions prevented
Swinburne from using a public
Cloud
Location

21. Challenge 4 Swinburne wanted to leverage
Ceph, as it is the most
commonly used storage for
OpenStack
However, they didn’t have the
in-house resources to support
a Community Ceph platform
Limited Resources

22. Challenge 5
Most vendor-supported
distributions are licensed on a
capacity basis
As Swinburne's data volumes
grow, so too would the cost of
storage
This model of licensing is
unsustainable for these
requirements
Sustainability

23. Challenge 6 How do we accommodate this
ever-growing need for
performance and capacity
while sticking to a tight
budget?Budget

24. The Solution
Swinburne University
of Technology

25. The Solution
Swinburne recognised that a
software defined approach to
storage offered an ideal fit for
its needs, as it could deliver
high performance and
scalability at significantly
lower cost than a traditional
storage infrastructure
This is where SUSE & Aptira
come in
A Software Defined Approach

26. The Solution
Swinburne selected SUSE
Enterprise Storage, a
software-defined storage
solution powered by Ceph
SUSE: Enterprise Storage

27. The Solution
Swinburne called on Aptira to
help integrate the new storage
solution into their existing
architecture
Aptira: Integrators

28. The Solution Swinburne has deployed two
clusters running SUSE
Enterprise Storage
One of these clusters is the
backend of
NeCTAR's OpenStack
Architecture

29. The Solution Both clusters provide storage
to Windows machines via
iSCSI gateway
The iSCSI gateway is
developed by SUSE and only
available on SES
Storage for Windows

30. The Solution The storage environment is
setup in a HA configuration,
continuously replicating data
between its main data centre
and its secondary siteData Replication

31. The Solution Swinburne uses Commvault
software to provide enterprise
backup and recovery, using
SUSE Enterprise Storage as its
cloud-based target storageBackup & Recovery

32. RDB Mirroring
RGW Multi-site
iSCSI Gateway iSCSI Gateway
iSCSI Multipath
RADOS Gateway RADOS Gateway
Commvault EN Commvault GS
Windows
SES EN SES GS OpenStack

33. The Results
Swinburne University
of Technology

34. The Results A distributed storage cluster,
SUSE Enterprise Storage
provides virtually unlimited
scalability
This gives Swinburne the
ability to easily expand
storage resources as required
Flexible

35. The Results
Rapid, reliable storage
Guaranteed security and
integrity of the stored data
Secure

36. The Results With a fast, flexible storage
platform in place, the IT team
at Swinburne can support the
needs of researchers more
effectivelyEfficient

37. The Results As SUSE Enterprise Storage
runs on commodity server and
storage hardware, it keeps
Swinburne’s initial capital
expenditure and ongoing
infrastructure costs low
Affordable

38. The Results
SUSE Enterprise Storage
offers an enterprise-supported
solution that is licensed per
node, instead of on a capacity
basis
This makes the product
commercially viable for
Swinburne
Commercially Viable

39. Winning!
Questions?