Life Sciences Computing offer managed storage to Life Science users. This provides enterprise level resilient storage and backup to all researchers who would not otherwise be able to justify the large investment needed to build a storage facility.
The storage facility resides inside the complex in a state of the art data center providing redundant power, cooling and fire suppression.
Backup is provided by a pair of UltraScalable Tape Libraries at different locations separated by 7km. Included within costing is the management of the backup system, tape expansion and cycling
Life Sciences Computing maintain a number of servers to allow access to the disk. The maintenance and management of these servers is included in the scheme.
ICS aim to provide a sufficient amount of data storage for staff / student general purpose teaching needs and email.
There are the following elements to storage on LSC managed systems:
Linux file servers connected to enterprise SAN storage controllers provide most user storage and due to logical volume management provide on demand capacity expansion.
A 5GB personal user file store is available to all users of LSC.
Additional storage space is available to groups and individuals at the annual costs available via Service Costs
The Light Microscopy Facility (LMF) is provided with a Hierarchical Storage Management System that automatically moves data from 100TB of SAN disk to tape. This provides the LMF users with a storage solution for Microscopy data.
The primary interface for all storage systems is a Windows SMB/CIFS share. NFS shares may be provided in exceptional circumstances if systems are incapable of using SMB/CIFS shares.
The current deployment of Managed Storage for the College contains 500 SAN ports and over 550TB of spinning disk.
Ensure integrity of the data and storage systems. Aim to respond to reported storage faults:
Aim to respond to requests for additional storage within 1 working day and to provision storage within 5 working days.
