BRISTOL UNIVERSITY DEPLOYS ONSTOR TO IMPROVE BUSINESS CONTINUITY WITH STORAGE CONSOLIDATION
Leading UK University Deploys Bobcat to Centralise Storage And Empower Its Departments

London, UK � May 30, 2006
ONStor, a leader in enterprise NAS Gateway solutions, today announced that the University of Bristol has adopted the Bobcat NAS Gateway as part of a push to enhance its business continuity strategy by deploying it as a target for native disk-to-disk backups, to deliver file storage to application servers, and to pilot CIFS services. Overall, two terabytes of data are stored via the ONStor Bobcat on a number of enterprise arrays; the NAS Gateways are clustered between two sites and operate over two Fibre Channel fabrics. ONStor's NAS Gateways consolidate enterprise-wide file services for Windows, UNIX, Linux, and Mac clients and servers onto Fibre Channel-attached, multi-vendor disk arrays.

The institution, founded in 1876, is organised in 45 departments and 15 research centres arranged in six faculties, and is home to more than 5,000 staff and over 11,000 students. It is also known for counting among its former pupils six Nobel Prize winners, ‘Little Britain’ star David Walliams, singer-songwriter James Blunt, Cancer Research UK Principal Scientist Dr Dale Wigley FRS, and England rugby players Josh Lewsey and Kyran Bracken.

Prior to deploying the NAS Gateway the institution’s storage infrastructure was based on a combination of file servers and direct attached storage. In order to ease management and improve cost-effectiveness the Information Services department considered NAS appliances from a number of vendors, as well as a number of alternatives based around Windows SharePoints Services and Linux, but ultimately selected ONStor because of the Bobcat NAS Gateway’s ability to enable consolidation of multi-vendor storage and to work smoothly in a clustered and replicated environment.

“We selected ONStor’s Bobcat because of the unique combination of cost-effectiveness and feature-set; we found the storage-neutral approach particularly attractive," said Jan Grant, applications architect at the University of Bristol. "We have a large number of departments, each with its own IT staff, and we wanted to offer a centrally-run storage service while being able to delegate as much day-to-day administrative control as possible. The Bobcat is very attractive from that point of view and also puts us in a position where in the future we might be able to offer departmental storage for traditional file services.”

“The University of Bristol is renowned for its academic strengths and commitment to quality and the IT department plays a pivotal role to ensure that both staff and students can benefit from the most advanced technology to advance their careers and studies,” said Gerald Sommariva, UK Managing Director at ONStor. “The scalability and openness of the Bobcat allows them to eliminate vendor lock-in thus maximising existing storage investments and at the same time offering improved services and support."


About ONStor
ONStor is the leader in enterprise-class NAS Gateways that consolidate file services on multi-vendor storage. ONStor storage solutions dramatically reduce management costs by providing customers with the most easily scaled storage environment, and reduce capital costs by delivering the freedom and flexibility of the industry's most interoperable platform. ONStor products and technology are offered by leading system integrators and resellers worldwide. All products are backed by a host of support offerings and by ONStor's uncompromising commitment to customer service. More information about ONStor can be found at www.ONStor.com or by calling toll-free 877-2ON-STOR (877-266-7867).