Liverpool John Moores University Modernizes with CTERA & Scality

University Background

Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) has long held an important presence in the educational and cultural landscape within one of the most famous and liveliest cities in the world. With its position within the top 30 largest universities in the country, LJMU is also one of the biggest employers in the Liverpool City Region.

LJMU vision is to be recognized as a modern civic university delivering solutions to the challenges of the 21st century, and to deliver our mission of a vibrant community for learning and knowledge where staff and students work together in an active and supportive partnership. LJMU provides opportunities to enrich our students, partners and the wider society through education, training, research, scholarship and knowledge exchange.

The Challenge

LJMU, like many educational organizations, was facing significant challenges with its legacy file storage systems. Its traditional NAS and archive solutions were approaching end-of-life, and the costs to continue with on-premises storage were skyrocketing as the amount of unstructured data generated continued to grow exponentially. The ideal solution for LJMU would allow the University to seamlessly scale for capacity as needed without overhauling and disrupting the end user experience.

The CTERA-Scality Solution

With CTERA and Scality, LJMU has the modern cloud file storage solution it was seeking. Scality RING, an object storage service, allows for simple capacity expansion through the addition of disks or servers to accommodate for LJMU’s unpredictable growth requirements. Scality RING runs on HPE Apollo servers located at multiple sites provides the underlying, resilient data storage platform. The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform creates a single namespace for all LJMU files and extends file services to all edge locations and devices. Together the solution helps LJMU achieve infinite cloud storage capacity with no impact on performance or security.

The CTERA-Scality architecture also delivers backup and DR benefits. If a LJMU site goes offline for any reason, users can still access files locally on the CTERA Edge Filer or through the cloud without any impact on service.

The solution enables a seamless migration from legacy NAS to a cloud-based platform with little to no impact for the end user. The intuitive interface and the self-service options, including undelete and sharing, reduces the management overhead on IT staff.

The CTERA Edge Filer provides SMB access to file shares stored on the Scality backend. Files are created initially on the filer and then synced with Scality RING object storage.

CTERA caching technology enables high-use and critical files to remain on the filer, improving performance. All new shares are created on the CTERA Portal, which provides a simple user interface through a web browser.

The use of quotas allows strict management of the available storage. Quotas are simple to use and quick to change allowing efficient allocation of available storage. CTERA and Scality solution can grow as needed and when required and for this reason a good match.