Dell helps build cloud computing platform on Digital campus of Guangzhou University

Tanglianzhang, director of the Network and Modern Education Technology center of Guangzhou University in early 2010, Tanglianzhang, director of the Network and Modern Education Technology center of Guangzhou University, came to Beijing, visited six IT company headquarters in three days, and he was eager to find the answer to the bottleneck problem that they encountered in the information construction.　　On the one hand, can dispel the suspicion of audit experts, on the other hand, it is also the most important to ensure that Guangzhou University digital campus construction smoothly. High starting point construction of Digital Campus Guangzhou University is a comprehensive university which was formed in 2000 by the combination of Guangzhou Teachers College, South China Construction College (West Courtyard), Guangzhou Institute of Education, Guangzhou University and Guangzhou Higher Normal College. From 2004 to 2005, each campus moved to the newly built Guangzhou University City.　　Guangzhou University as a whole moved into the university, the campus network of the first and two phase of construction, in the infrastructure has built advanced equipment hardware platform, high-performance Cisco 65.13 million trillion core exchange, million trillion backbone, gigabit to buildings, hundreds of megabytes to the desktop of Fast Ethernet.　　Campus information points up to more than 40,000, teaching areas, office areas, living area Network information point coverage of up to hundred, wireless network coverage of the school, the Internet exports have 300 trillion optical fiber access network, 800 gigabit broadband access to telecommunications public network. With the further application of information technology to school teaching, at all levels of scientific research, management and life, the original independent construction of Guangzhou University application system is more and more difficult to adapt to the needs of comprehensive application, and with the rapid increase of users and information on campus network, it is urgent to need unified information management, for the school departments and personnel to provide integrated,　　User-centric information services. In order to improve the overall core competitiveness of the school and accelerate the process of promoting high level and characteristic local comprehensive university, Guangzhou University started the campus informatization construction in early 2009. "School leaders attach great importance to information construction, which is as important as undergraduate evaluation."　　Tanglianzhang told reporters. At the beginning of information construction, Guangzhou University has set a clear goal: the use of advanced network technology, communication technology, computer technology and education management concepts, in advanced, high-performance new generation of information infrastructure, building advanced, open Digital Campus application support platform, the development and integration of network basic application system, electronic school affairs system , teaching Service system and integrated information Service system to carry out multi-level application.　　To realize the high integration of information application, resources and service, provide advanced and perfect digital platform for school teaching, scientific research, management and life, and finally reach the leading level of domestic similar institutions. The bottleneck in the construction of digital campus under the guidance of clear ideas, Guangzhou University of Information construction in 2009 began a big step forward. According to Tanglianzhang director introduced, "we first built a platform, in which we built a unified identity card certification platform and unified information portal platform, the establishment of this platform is equivalent to the establishment of a framework, all applications must be under the uniform norms to do, to avoid the emergence ofIsolated system applications.　　"In this context, the establishment of OA system, educational management information system, human resources management Information system, orientation management and other business applications." In the next planning, Tanglianzhang and his team were in trouble. Previous applications were deployed in the traditional way on 14 blades purchased at the beginning of 2009. These servers are far from meeting the growing demand for operating systems. In the 2010 Digital Campus Two project planning, this issue became the focus of discussion: whether to buy more servers to meet new requirements.　　The attendant increase in the number of servers brought about by the increased management costs. Tanglianzhang that the current situation of university informatization is that most of the data center is based on the server (minicomputer or blade server) and SAN storage connection mode, an application system deployed on several servers (application server, database server), through minicomputer or multiple sets of blades to achieve multiple applications deployment.　　The main problems are high input, difficult management, low efficiency, high-energy consumption and low availability. "The application system of digital campus has dozens of (such as educational administration, personnel management, Office, scientific Research Management, financial management, Fixed Assets management, experimental teaching management, postgraduate management, etc.), the construction of the application system needs a large number of servers to support, so there must be a greater investment in construction funds." "Tanglianzhang told reporters," in order to solve the problem of hardware single point of failure, the key application system is usually supported by the main, standby server, which requires more server resources, more money invested. "Tanglianzhang told reporters:" In the system, since the digital campus each system needs more than one server resources to support, but the actual use, some applications may be only a few days a day, the use of the number of times is also very few; In addition, these application systems use patterns are very regular, such as the use and access of most users focused on working hours. Especially the abnormal working hours (evening, holiday) utilization rate is lower. In these times, only a few people occasionally use OA system, mail system, curriculum resource system and so on, a large number of business systems are actually idle, resource utilization is not more than 5%, but to support the normal operation of these application systems all resources need uninterrupted work. Based on these objective problems, Tanglianzhang thought of "cloud computing". If using the cloud computing platform virtualization technology in the abnormal working hours only 20 servers can support the entire system, the single server to run energy consumption (without cooling, lighting and other ancillary energy consumption) this year can save electricity for 286,400-kilowatt hours.　　From this calculation, the use of cloud computing solutions, the system can save about 53% of the energy consumption per year, that is, 530,000-kilowatt times a year to save electricity (including cooling, lighting and other supporting energy consumption). As a Guangzhou, Guangzhou University's information construction funds are paid by the financial, project planning through the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Education and the Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Bureau led the review of the expert group. The idea of "cloud computing" in the expertIt seems "too advanced" to be rejected.　　To persuade the group's leaders, Tanglianzhang chose the answer to go north. Cloud computing Crack Puzzle 2010 years, Tanglianzhang visited the headquarters of six IT companies, including Dell, IBM, put forward their own needs, listen to each other's views. April 2010, Tanglianzhang in Guangzhou University organized a cloud computing demonstration, and set up the relevant platform for testing. It vendors are deployed and tested with their own products. On this basis, the Guangzhou University Cloud Computing Project bidding documents were formally written, a number of technical experts involved in the final Dell's cloud computing platform to stand out. Tanglianzhang said: "The reason for choosing Dell is six words: heterogeneous, simple, applicable." "At present, more than 20 systems in Guangzhou University have been deployed on the cloud computing platform built by Dell." The portal system of 25 colleges in Guangzhou University is also built on the cloud computing platform, which realizes the unified management of the portal system, which can be managed by every login point.　　On the one hand, save a lot of server resources, on the other hand improve the efficiency of management. After the cloud platform, resolved several aspects of the problem: we build a cloud computing platform is the principle of intensification, sharing, dynamic.　　First, the integration of computer resources, improve equipment utilization, perspective to reduce complexity, to achieve the sharing of computer resources and storage resources, improve it productivity, such as energy conservation, reduce power consumption, especially improve system reliability and availability. Unlike other colleges and universities to build a cloud computing platform with High-performance computing as the starting point, Guangzhou University takes the teaching management and school management as the Cut-in Point, aims at constructing the digital campus, and has achieved remarkable results in a year's time. The next research direction of Guangzhou University cloud computing platform is how to provide services for key scientific research projects through virtual computing resources.