Hybrid clouds and mini pods
Loughborough University has recently commissioned the creation of a ‘hybrid cloud’ (local and remote) of server and storage capacity to meet its generic enterprise IT needs. The local cloud leverages blade server and virtualisation technology, and in-rack ‘mini pod’ cooling, to reduce carbon and space footprint, and avoid an expensive data centre building refurbishment project. The remote (private/public) cloud comprises Google Apps and Logicalis Co-operative Enterprise Cloud, plus commercial utility Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), all delivered via JANET.
Building on themes developed at recent UCISA and JISC events, the presentation will suggest ways for the sector to work together to achieve commercial utility IaaS at lower cost like-for-like than local hosting, and examine the role that a not-for-profit organisation such as Eduserv might play in bringing this about.