Case Study: National and University Library (NUL) of Slovenia
|
Company Overview
HP Writes the Book on NAS-SAN Fusion for National Library
Historians generally credit grammarian and scholar Jernej Kopitar with formalizing the Slovene language in the early 1800s. Kopitar's priceless collections of medieval Slavic writings - called codices - reside in Slovenia's National and University Library (NUL). Until recently, only qualified scholars could access these writings on a limited basis. Thanks to an HP StorageWorks solution, scanned images of these documents will soon be available to the public over the Web and from local library computers.
Business Challenge
The HP StorageWorks NAS B3000 system is enabling NUL to expand immediate access to approximately 14,000 pages contained in the Slavic codices. Currently, the library stores 800GB of digitized documents on DLT tapes. Before, locating and accessing individual document images stored on tape took up to two hours. The NAS B3000 enables NUL to reduce document retrieval time to mere seconds and, eventually, will allow the library to extend access to hundreds of thousands of pages of other rare manuscripts, books and newspapers.
NUL is located in Ljubljana, the capital and largest city in the Republic of Slovenia, one of six former Yugoslavian republics. In 1774, the Empress Maria Theresa established the library by decree, and it became recognized as the Slovenian national library in 1945. Famed Slovenian architect Joze Plecnik designed the original building to house 250,000 volumes, yet the library's collection grew past 2.2 million. Consequently, the library stores much of its collection offsite, resulting in document access delays and other restrictions.
Solution
Turning the Page to Faster Access and Better Service
NUL is using the NAS B3000 system to provide the public with access to its digital archives, which will feature low-resolution images of all archived documents. The library will continue to keep high-resolution versions of the documents on tape and make them available upon request.
In addition, NUL employs the NAS B3000 - which fuses NAS and SAN technologies - as the hub of its storage-consolidation efforts. The library's three IT administrators have their hands full managing 250 desktop PCs and more than 20 servers, including five HP ProLiant servers. The NAS B3000 can scale to 27TB, and provides a foundation for a single, managed storage infrastructure. To save time and money, as well as to improve storage utilization and management, NUL is consolidating key server storage onto this NAS solution.
"It became increasingly difficult to manage our storage resources without implementing centralized storage," begins NUL's Systems and Network Manager Janez Groznik. "Every day we ran into problems due to the lack of storage on one server or disk. It's inefficient and costly when we have to buy and install a new disk for every new project or demand. We have about 100GB of storage per server and, eventually, we plan to consolidate all of that onto an HP SAN. The HP StorageWorks NAS B3000 system is our first step in that direction, and it is a key building block in our long-term storage strategy. Meanwhile, we are already making our resources more accessible and responsive to the public with this solution."
The NAS B3000 is an ideal choice to meet NUL's immediate and future storage needs. The system offers enterprise-level availability, scalability and performance in a turnkey package. The HP storage system supports both file- and block-level access, addressing initial networked storage needs as well as future SAN requirements.
Business Benefits
A New Chapter for Mission-Critical Applications
NUL's IT staff considered several vendors before deciding on the NAS B3000 solution. They tested another vendor's NAS system in their data center, but it proved incompatible with the Microsoft Windows environment. "The other NAS system wouldn't work in our Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server domain," Groznik observes. "We also had difficulty applying group policy on the other storage system. We have many shares on the server and the other system would have required a lot of manual intervention. Microsoft Windows compatibility is a major reason we like the HP StorageWorks NAS B3000 system."
Along with supporting the Microsoft Windows operating environment, another key role for the NAS B3000 is to provide storage for multiple application servers. According to Groznik, one of the first critical applications slated for migration to the solution is the library's Microsoft Exchange Server running on an HP ProLiant ML350 server: "We will have no trouble finding uses for the first terabyte of storage on our HP StorageWorks NAS B3000 system. From document and Web archives to storage consolidation and application server duties, we have many needs for the NAS B3000 to fulfill. One of the key reasons we selected the HP storage solution was its scalability; it will grow with our needs."
The library is also using the NAS B3000 to provide storage for a regional library-information and cataloging system, which runs on an HP AlphaServer 4100 system under the HP OpenVMS operating system. The Cooperative Online Bibliographic System and Services (COBISS) was developed in 1987 and is based on OpenVMS for terminal emulation and communications links. Participating libraries use HP AlphaServer systems to house local databases of library resources available to COBISS members. OpenVMS and AlphaServer technology was selected for COBISS due to its reliability and widely available support services.
HP: The Index for Efficient Services and Excellent Manageability
HP Services and partners helped make the configuration and implementation of the NAS B3000 easy and fast. "We were very pleased with HP reseller Atlantis; they installed and configured our HP storage solution efficiently," Groznik notes. "I expected installation and startup to last at least a day or two, but it only took two hours to make the solution operational."
Additionally, NUL's staff likes the NAS B3000 system's tight integration with the library's existing remote-management tools, including HP Insight Manager, HP Remote Insight Lights-Out Edition (RILOE) and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-based management software. HP monitoring tools save time by giving the staff virtual presence and control, enabling them to respond proactively to potential fault conditions. Groznik and other library staff can monitor storage and server resources easily from any desktop computer or server with IP network access.
The library backs up critical data from the NAS B3000 system, and other storage devices, nightly and weekly using Veritas Backup Exec software, running on an HP ProLiant ML330 server. The NAS system supports backup solutions from most major vendors and includes high availability features, such as cluster support, redundant hardware and RAID protection.
Chronicles of Culture Preserved on NAS
According to Groznik, the library is also using the NAS B3000 to preserve examples of Slovenian modern culture found on the Internet, including Web pages, literature, video clips, audio files, and much more: "This cultural record is just one example of the critical data we are moving to the HP StorageWorks NAS B3000 system. This change in storage strategy is also leading to a reevaluation of our heterogeneous server environment. We plan to standardize on HP storage and server solutions, because they are scalable, compatible, reliable and agile - just the right solution for our current and future needs."
