Qlogic SANbox 1400 Series Manual

CASE STUDY
Jefferson
Union High
School District
QLogic and Hitachi Data Systems
End Data Truancy at School District
Challenge
Find a scalable and cost-effective storage area network (SAN)
for student projects, coursework, and administrative records
at a mid-sized school district.
Solution
The Hitachi Data Systems®Plug-and-Play SAN Kit includes
everything needed for a complete SAN in Microsoft®Windows
Server™environments: QLogic®SANbox®Express 1000
switching components (one 10-port, 2Gbps QLogic SANbox
Express 1400 switch, QLogic HBAs, connectors, cables,
drivers), as well as a 2TB Hitachi Data Systems AMS200
TagmaStore™Adaptable Modular Storage unit that can scale
to up to 41TB of storage.
Result
The HDS SAN kit allows students and teachers to keep all
their work on the scalable SAN instead of limited server
direct-attached storage (DAS ), which required deleting old
documents to make way for new files. Centralized storage
keeps the district in compliance with state funding mandates
that require immediate access to attendance records.
A commitment to using computers in education has put data storage at the top of the
list of required school supplies at the Jefferson Union High School District (JUHD) in
northern California. The over 5,000 students in the district’s five schools rely on storage
to hold homework assignments, which are often submitted electronically in the form of
Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and html documents.
Teachers in the district need more storage for their work as well, including attendance
records, grades, lesson plans, class assignments, and e-mail. In addition, district
administrators need access to student records and human resources information
about staff.
Yet until recently, finding information was time-consuming because information was
spread across direct-attached storage devices on servers used for file serving, e-
mail, and printing. “People had to look on multiple servers to find the information they
needed,” said Lou Silberman, director of IT at JUHD.
Absentee Data Affects School District Performance
Because of a limited amount of storage on some servers, server crashes were a regular
occurrence. “This impacted productivity in the classroom and our administrative
offices,” said Silberman, “It was difficult for students and teachers to reap the benefits
of computer-based education. We could have continued to add disks to servers, but
in the long run, this was too labor-intensive and the delays and disruptions required
to get more storage installed made it impossible to meet our users’ needs,” he said.
“Instead, we limited storage-per-user as a stop-gap measure to prevent the server
crashes. Students were given 20MB at the beginning of the year, while teachers were
given only 200MB to hold all their records. Unfortunately, these limitations meant that
users frequently had to delete old files to make way for new documents.”
Limited storage capacity also had an impact on district finances, Silberman said.
“California pairs funding with student attendance records. We needed more storage to
make sure we could store and quickly find every document affecting financial support,”
he said. “But because our DAS system was unwieldy, we were hesitant to digitize old
administrative files—and this meant that teachers and support staff wasted a great
deal of time looking for paper records in filing cabinets,” Silberman added.
“Now that all servers share a central storage pool, we can expand the ways in
which we use information technology. With the Plug-and-Play SAN Kit, our com-
puter concerns revolve around possibilities instead of problems.”
— Lou Silberman, Director of IT, Jefferson Union High School District

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CASE STUDY
JUHD Gets a Real-World Storage Education
To resolve these issues once and for all, JUHD needed a centralized storage
pool. “The prospect of installing a SAN was very appealing because it would
give us the scalability we needed while reducing the amount of time we spend
on administration,” Silberman explained. “As we evaluated alternatives,
networked storage appeared to be too expensive—and required more hands-
on administration than we were able to provide. But then I talked to engineers
at Hitachi Data Systems (HDS ) who explained how their Plug-and- Play SAN
Kit, built with QLogic switches, could solve these issues.”
The HDS Plug-and-Play SAN Kit had the scalability to meet the district’s
centralized storage needs for several years to come. The kit includes a 2TB
HDS AMS200 TagmaStore®Adaptable Modular Storage unit, which can
scale up to 41TB of capacity. And to provide fast server access, the SAN
connectivity package includes a 2Gbps QLogic SANbox Express 1400 Fibre
Channel switch.
Installation and manageability is simple, requiring little IT staff time. Designed
specifically for small and mid-sized organizations with limited IT resources,
the Plug-and-Play SAN Kit includes all the connectors, cables, and drivers
required for installation. Intuitive installation and configuration Wizards make
configuration rapid and easy.
All these features impressed Silberman—as did the affordability of the
comprehensive SAN kit. “Of all the alternatives we evaluated, the HDS Plug-
and- Play SAN Kit offered the best value for the money,” he said. “The price
of the complete package was many thousands of dollars less than what we
would have paid for just a switch and a storage array.”
Students’ Data Achieves a Perfect Attendance Record
With the intuitive QLogic installation wizard included with the package,
Silberman quickly installed the SAN kit. “There was no need for time-
consuming and expensive training,” he said. “The QLogic CD included with
the kit automatically detects servers, QLogic host bus adapters and HDS
storage array and configures the entire system easily.”
Silberman configured the HDS Plug-and-Play SAN Kit with 15 Fibre Channel
disk drives, each with a capacity of 350GB—more than 5TB of storage, or
four times the capacity of the DAS system on the 30 servers. “We now
have twice the capacity we need, which ensures that records and files
cannot be affected by downtime,” Silberman continued. “Storing teaching
records and homework assignments is no longer constrained by minimal
amounts of storage. Students each get 300MB of personal storage, and we
no longer have a limit on how much disk space teachers can use. Plus, the
amount of time our staff spends finding administrative records has been
significantly reduced.”
Because storage can now be quickly allocated to servers, the days of server
crashes due to insufficient storage are long gone, which increases classroom
and administrative efficiency, Silberman added. “The 10 ports of the QLogic
SANbox 1400 provide more than enough switching capacity to keep pace
with increasing user needs,” he said.
Uninterrupted Information Access Broadens the Curriculum
“Now that all servers share common storage, we can expand the ways in
which we use information technology rather than putting out fires,” Silberman
said. “Now, the IT staff spends very little time on storage management, so we
have the time to put new programs into place, such as electronic grade books
and online portfolios. With the HDS Plug-and-Play SAN Kit, our computer
concerns revolve around possibilities instead of problems.”
The HDS Plug-and-Play SAN Kit Makes Storage a Snap
Designed to help growing small and medium-sized
businesses manage storage capacity effectively and easily,
the competitively priced Hitachi Data Systems Plug-and-Play
SAN Kit enables companies of any size to enjoy the benefits
of networked storage —without having to hire a SAN expert.
The kit includes the QLogic SAN Express Starter Kit 1000 and
Hitachi Data Systems TagmaStore Modular Storage (models
AMS200, AMS500).
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of their respective owners. Information supplied by QLogic is believed to be accurate and reliable. QLogic Corporation assumes no responsibility for any errors in this brochure. QLogic Corporation reserves the right, without notice, to makes changes in product
design or specifications.
SN0130936-00 Rev A 2/07
Jefferson Union High School District
As seen in this illustration, the QLogic SANbox Express 1400 Fibre Channel switch
is central to the Jefferson Unified High School District SAN. The switch manages
5TB of data stored in a Hitachi Data Systems TagmaStore Adaptable Modular
Storage, model AMS200. Data from the HDS array is relayed to a file server for past
and current projects, as well as to other servers dedicated to printing, e-mail, and
administrative records.