”Over the past year we have been dealing with SQS for the supply of specialist hardware. During this time, we have found them to be professional, reliable and responsive to our requirements. These high standards are of the upmost importance in our busy environment and SQS should be proud of their efforts.”
“SQS have not only provided me with good hardware RAID solutions (expanding with my needs) at very reasonable prices, but have given me great customer service by providing me with a backup facility when migrating to a higher-end storage solution.
SQS Data Storage Case Story – Chew Valley School
About Chew Valley School
Chew Valley School is a thriving comprehensive, situated eight miles south of Bristol, serving the communities of the Chew Valley. With 1200 pupils including 200 in the Sixth Form, the school is a vibrant environment, which boasts impressive examination results. The vast majority of sixth formers go on to universities including Oxford and Cambridge.
The school became a Specialist School in the Performing Arts in 2003, which has led to improvements in the school’s drama and music facilities. Further developments will be seen in 2009 with the addition of new Sixth Form and Art buildings.
The Challenge
As a specialist school in the Performing Arts, it is vital that Chew Valley remains at the forefront of excellence and ensures that it is providing its pupils with the most up-to-date and relevant curriculum available. When the school opted to host a new BTEC Performing Arts Diploma in 2009, it quickly became apparent that the Chew Valley’s data storage capabilities were not going to be sufficient. The course requires the 30 students to produce large media files, such as videos of varying lengths, to be stored in raw format on the schools network. However, with the storage servers rapidly reaching maximum capacity, the school began to look at alternative solutions.
Andrew Francomb, Network Manager at Chew Valley School, says: “Originally we had been planning to replace two of our ageing file servers and buy a Storage Area Network (SAN) to consolidate the storage. We had very specific requirements for the solution; it had to be fault tolerant and load balancing, accessed via a distributed file system and interoperable between both Windows and Mac environments. The size requirements for storage space were around 5 terabytes, but it was also vital that there was room for expansion as our school, and the courses we provide, continue to grow, so too does our storage requirements.”
Initially, Andrew began to explore the possibility of selecting a Fibre Channel SANS, iSCSI SAN, SAS DAS or NAS from large companies such as Dell and Sun but these proved to be prohibitive in cost. Andrew would also need to purchase the separate servers to run them on top of the initial cost, which was not a viable option for the school.
Andrew explains: “When we started to look at the costs of selecting a solution from the larger storage suppliers, it was evident that the costs were too high for our budget and not an option that the school could accommodate. We required two iSCSI SAN’s, with one coming in at a minimum of £10,000, and that’s without the additional servers we would need to run them. I had to go back to drawing board, and look for an alternative and cost-effective solution, which could provide the same functionality but without the cost restrictions.”
He continues: “After conducting some further research, I decided to opt for server based storage but then I had to tackle the issue of finding a server with a large enough capacity. This is where SQS Data Storage came to the forefront. I was amazed to find a large capacity NAS server, with a 24 bay capability, which had all the functionality we had specified. The capabilities of the storage solution, and at almost half the price of their larger counterparts, with no additional management overheads, made selecting two of the SQS Prostor 424S appliances the obvious choice to fulfil Chew Valley School’s requirements.”
The Solution
The SQS Prostor 424S storage appliance supplies file-based data storage services to other computers and devices on the network. This centralised storage is of particular benefit to organisations with large amounts of data. Providing high volumes of storage capacity, the 4U rackmount servers, with 24 hot swap SATA II/ SAS data drives, offers flexibility, fault tolerance, speed and data security. Designed for quick and easy installation, without interrupting the network configuration, the solution can be up and running within minutes.
“Installing the appliance couldn’t have been more straightforward”, explains Andrew, “We needed something that could be set-up and in full working order quickly. The SQS Prostor was, in basic terms, a plug-in-and-go solution, which seamlessly integrated into our current IT infrastructure. I was able to get the whole system installed and operational within two days, and it eliminated many of the problems that could have arisen from selecting a SAN solution. An added benefit was that when I was setting-up the appliance, the current network configuration we had established was not interrupted; this meant that the pupils and staff didn’t suffer with any server outages, which would have affected the day to day running of the school.”
The versatility of the SQS Prostor appliance enables organisations to create a storage volume of the whole disk capacity all in a single volume. This not only eliminates volume limitations, but also has the added benefit of eradicating the need to create dynamic disks and spanned volumes, giving larger storage capacities.
“Media files are notoriously large in size; we needed to be confident that the NAS servers would be able to store the additional data. This was something that we didn’t need to worry about with the SQS Prostor appliance. We are currently only using half of the capacity in each of the two servers, so we have plenty of additional storage space, meaning that as the school continues to grow, we do not have to worry about whether we have enough capacity. We know we do.”
The ability to increase the reliability and the performance of the data transfered was a key component when selecting the new server appliance. Having previously only accessed a RAID 5 storage environment, Chew Valley School now benefits from the additional functionality of RAID 10. With improved data transfer speed, performance and fault tolerance, Andrew can be confident that the system is much faster and much more secure.
The Future
Andrew says: “For us selecting the SQS Prostor 424S has been nothing but positive and we have already begun to see the benefits of the server. The quick and easy installation meant that we didn’t waste any time in ensuring that our students could benefit from the extra storage capacity, and also meant that the rest of the team could focus on other aspects of the schools IT systems, without having to worry about whether the server would fail. We haven’t suffered with any problems with the new server, but the user manual is clear, concise and easy to read, meaning that if anything was to arise we would be able to quickly rectify it without impacting on the day-to-day running of the school.”
He continues: “As the school continues to grow, and the number of pupils that take the new Performing Arts Diploma increases, I’m confident in the knowledge that we have sufficient storage capacity for the next 5 years. We had a number of requirements that needed to be fulfilled when we began to look for a new server, and SQS Prostor has met every single one of them, without the high price tag of its competitors. It has proved much more than I ever imagined it to be and I wouldn’t hesitate to select a SQS Prostor solution again for our storage requirements as they have proved to be the most reliable, scalable, secure and cost effective solution.
