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Home >> Success Stories >> Julian Samora Research Success Stories
FlashDisk Provides a Storehouse for Latino Research The Organization - www.jsri.msu.edu Founded in 1989 at Michigan State University, the Julian Samora Research Institute has one purpose-to generate, to transmit, and to apply knowledge that will serve the needs of Latino communities in the Midwest. Grants to the Institute help to fund empirical research done by scholars and to publish their research as books or monographs. This research looks at relevant social, economic, educational, and political conditions of Latino communities in both the United States, as a whole, and the Midwest, in particular. The Institute's forthcoming data will serve as a resource about and for Hispanics. FlashDisk Customer Profile As Told By Julian Samora Research Institute “Several years ago, the school's information technology (IT) department had some IBM RAID 5 arrays - a 7135 and a 7133 array. They didn't have the speed we needed. That's why we replaced the IBM disks with FlashDisks. We also looked at other vendors, such as Data General and EMC, but they couldn't deliver storage devices with comparable performance in the same price range as the FlashDisks. These vendors are comparable to the IBM. We now have three FlashDisks and another one on order.” “The Institute started out a decade ago publishing small books and some reports. Since then, we've increased both our research and publishing volume ten times over. Up until three years ago, we could get away with publishing a book on paper, and then file it away. If we needed to print a book, we'd pull it out of the file and then put it away. To keep up with the volume of research we had to publish, we found ourselves producing more electronic files. And these files kept getting larger and more complex. Researchers broke down chapters into multiple files. One book could consist of 20 different files. Researchers also generated charts and graphics electronically, as well as PowerPoint presentations. Books not only got published in hardcopy, but we had to make them available via our Web site. To this end, we were generating new types of files that we never had before. Disk space on a desktop personal computer couldn't handle the volume we started to churn out. We didn't want to start adding large hard disk drives to our desktop PCs. If one PC's disk drive failed, then we'd have to restore files from a previous backup tape, and recreate what we lost. That's inefficient. So, with some technology funds from the government and the University, we decided to buy a central storage system to house our publications and Web site. Our search for a high quality storage system brought us to Winchester Systems. We purchased a FlashDisk RAID storage system. Just three years ago we had virtually no storage - just a few desktop PCs. During this time, the FlashDisk has allowed a small research department, within a large university, to turn itself into a publishing powerhouse on a small purse. Some of the other departments on campus are in awe of our storage system. And there're good reasons for it. Two side-by-side Dell PowerEdge 2200s - one Windows NT and one Linux - plug directly into the FlashDisk. It provides fast, highly reliable RAID 5 storage to multiple servers with different operating systems. This feature eliminates the expense of buying storage for each server. Besides, managing one storage system is easier than managing two or three of them. The Windows NT server, which connects to the Intranet within the building, functions as a central repository for all active publications, and for the databases used to inventory and to track these publications. The FlashDisk allows each researcher to have their own storage space, apart from the desktop. Using either a Windows-based PC or a Mac PC, researchers can access both Windows NT and Mac files stored on the FlashDisk. Cross-platform programs allow researchers to share both types of files on the FlashDisk. The FlashDisk also contains our large collection of artwork. Overall, the FlashDisk provides the researchers with fast access to a large bank of files - everything from text to graphics, regardless of the format-over an Intranet. When we stop publishing a book, we archive it on a CD ROM or a DVD. Meanwhile, the Linux server, which connects to the external network, contains all of our Web files. About 700 Web pages reside on the FlashDisk. Each day, our Web site gets about 3,000 hits or about 100,000 hits a month. We partitioned the FlashDisk to provide one partition for Linux and four for the Windows NT server. Setting the space aside on the FlashDisk to store the Linux files, as well the Linux operating system, turned out to be a piece of cake. We just followed the FlashDisk's flawless instructions in the manual, and made one telephone call to technical support. We were up and running. While researchers do a good job of maintaining their space, we continue to exceed our storage requirements. So, we're planning to upgrade our FlashDisk to double our amount of storage. We can do this inexpensively because Winchester Systems will give us credit toward a trade-in on the drives. The service folks at Winchester Systems must feel like the repair people at Maytag. The FlashDisk has never broken down-not even hiccupped. What Other Applications Will Hit the FlashDisk Money from the University will allow us to produce audio and video clips for the Web. We've already tested accessing and storing multimedia on the FlashDisk. Everything worked fine.”
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