The University of Alaska Fairbanks Modernizes Data Management to Support Capacity Demands and Usage

The University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF) is a flagship campus of the University of Alaska system, which is a land, sea, and space grant university with locations throughout Alaska. With nine academic schools and colleges, 35,000 alumni, and over $100 million in annual research funding, UAF produces vast amounts of data that must be efficiently stored for the long term. As the principal research center for the statewide university system, the university has several different internal departments with diverse storage needs and budget constraints. The UAF IT team was running legacy solutions that were inhibiting the university’s research efforts. To effectively manage the massive and diverse volumes of data, the team recognized the need for a modern, high-performing, cost-effective, and user-friendly solution.

Versity was able to take over UAF’s existing system with no data migration, which eliminated the most significant barrier to their modernization project and ended inefficiencies imposed by legacy solutions. The IT team simply dumped metadata from an existing Solaris server and then restored it onto a new Linux server running the Versity platform. The transition from Oracle HSM to Versity was completed in a few hours. The team was very pleased they didn’t lose any functionality from their existing solution and, in fact, gained visibility into their data and the storage quota and chargeback features they were seeking.