Bellarmine College Prep Deploys Low-Cost SAN with Off-the-Shelf Hardware

Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, CA has deployed a software-defined storage system to reduce storage costs and provide campus-wide redundancy.

A few years ago, the private secondary school realized it needed a shared storage system to handle the increasing amount of data it was storing, and it also needed faster performance, higher availability and centralized management. They received a donation of a traditional storage area network, but after that system expired the school couldn't afford to replace it. Instead, the IT team built its own storage infrastructure running DataCore SANsymphony-V on SuperMicro-based servers with LSI SAS/SATA controllers and various off-the-shelf hard drives, according to information on DataCore's site.

Bellarmine's do-it-yourself SAN is a cost-effective and flexible solution that gives them the freedom to use any hypervisor, storage or server platform. It also enables them to purchase additional hard drives as needed, so they can take advantage of faster, larger, lower-cost drives as they come on the market. According to DataCore, SANsymphony-V has also enabled to school to improve performance and reduce storage-related downtime by splitting the SAN so one node and its storage are located in the school's primary data center, while the other node and its storage are located in the school's secondary data center.

"Having the ability to scale and work across multiple nodes campus-wide and to be able to fail over as needed for upgrades/maintenance/expansion — even during regular business hours — is a real luxury," said Chris Carey, IT director at Bellarmine, in a prepared statement. "DataCore SANsymphony-V hasn't been down since we installed it."

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • blue AI cloud connected to circuit lines, a server stack, and a shield with a padlock icon

    Report: AI Security Controls Lag Behind Adoption of AI Cloud Services

    According to a recent report from cybersecurity firm Wiz, nearly nine out of 10 organizations are already using AI services in the cloud — but fewer than one in seven have implemented AI-specific security controls.

  • stacks of glowing digital documents with circuit patterns and data streams

    Mistral AI Intros Advanced AI-Powered OCR

    French AI startup Mistral AI has announced Mistral OCR, an advanced optical character recognition (OCR) API designed to convert printed and scanned documents into digital files with "unprecedented accuracy."

  • robot waving

    Copilot Updates Aim to Personalize AI

    Microsoft has introduced a range of updates to its Copilot platform, marking a new phase in its effort to deliver what it calls a "true AI companion" that adapts to individual users' needs, preferences and routines.

  • teenager interacts with a chatbot on a computer screen

    Character.AI Rolls Out New Parental Insights Feature Amid Safety Concerns

    Chatbot platform Character.AI has introduced a new Parental Insights feature aimed at giving parents a window into their children's activity on the platform. The feature allows users under 18 to share a weekly report of their chatbot interactions directly with a parent's e-mail address.