HPE QN998A, E7X03A User Manual
Case Study
University of Würzburg
brings scalability to its
Objective
Installing a flexible, scalable server and
storage infrastructure that could store
and archive fast-growing data volumes
quickly, securely and reliably
Approach
Extensive consultation and workshops
with HPE and its partner Bechtle
IT Matters
• Having a highly automated solution
from a single provider relieves strain
on the IT administrators
• Fast overnight backup creation
using LTO-6 tape drives
• Expanding the solution is fast,
flexible and cost-eective
Business Matters
• High stability and availability of the
entire storage and server environment
for teaching and research
• The solution puts the University in an
excellent position to be able to cope
with ever-increasing data volumes and
future applications
• There is one, single point of contact
in the event of an issue as the entire
solution is provided by HPE
data centre
Integrated HPE server and storage solution
manages increasing data volumes
When dramatic increases
in data volumes began to
push the existing storage
and server infrastructure
to its limits, the team
decided to look for a
modern, flexible and
scalable replacement.
They found it in an
integrated solution from
HPE comprising two
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
7400 systems and two
HPE StoreEver ESL G3 tape
libraries with LTO-6 tapes.
Challenge
Increasing data volumes create
capacity bottlenecks
The University of Würzburg’s data
centre is its central IT service provider.
Its 50 employees provide IT services
including system operation, network and
communication, consultation, information,
training and multimedia services, to the
University’s 28,000 students and 4,000
research and teaching sta across its
various faculties and institutes. Founded
over 600 years ago, the University oers
courses across a wide range of subjects.
Accompanying its traditional fields of
medicine, theology, philosophy and law
are now a number of new areas of study,
including nanostructure technology,
functional materials, biomedicine, digital
humanities, media communication and
human-computer systems.
Case study
University of
Würzburg
“With the two HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7400 and HPE StoreEver ESL G3 tape
libraries with LTO-6 tapes, we now have a large enough buer to be able
to cope with the increasing data volumes our faculties will generate over
the next few years.”
– Dr. Matthias Reichling, deputy data centre manager and centralised and decentralised services manager,
Industry
Education
University of Würzburg
Page 2
The data centre works closely with a number
of external IT service providers. Each user at
the University is assigned their own central
directory. The data they store is always
backed up and they have the option to
archive their data if they need to.
The data centre currently operates some
40 standalone servers and 48 blades
(Linux, OES, Windows® Server and ESXi
clusters), multiple VMware ESXi clusters
for over 300 virtual servers – running
entirely on HPE blade technology – and
around 300 virtual desktops. The entire data
centre infrastructure has long been based
on a complete Hewlett Packard Enterprise
solution comprising servers, storage and
network components. “We’ve always had
excellent experiences with HPE hardware
and fantastic service from its partner
Bechtle. The environment is highly available
and very stable,” says Dr. Matthias Reichling,
deputy data centre manager and centralised
and decentralised services manager at the
University of Würzburg. “So we were very
happy that we were able to continue working
with both of them when it came time to
replace our existing IT infrastructure, which
was bursting at the seams. The presales
advisors have also got to know us well over
the years and always provide fast answers to
our queries.”
The existing storage environment –
comprising two HPE EVA storage arrays
and two HPE ESL 712 LTO-4 tape libraries
housed in two separate data centre rooms
– had finally reached its limits. There was
300 TB of data in the storage area network
(SAN). “Over the past ten years, our data
volumes have increased by a factor of 12.
And we’re expecting it to grow even more
in the coming years,” says Reichling.
“We can’t tell exactly how much as it
depends on the projects our faculties
have planned – and we often have no
idea when they’re coming.”
Many faculties are using applications
that are beginning to generate larger and
larger volumes of data. “The resolutions of
the cameras, microscope and measuring
devices that many of our faculties use have
increased dramatically in recent years,”
continues Reichling. Histological tissue
samples, for example, easily generate images
of 100,000 x 100,000 pixels. And as they are
often in colour, file sizes can be anything up
to 30 GB or more. Experts predict that data
volumes produced by imaging software will
approximately double every three years.
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