The Bank of "Yun" in colleges and universities--the private cloud construction of Anhui University and Xiamen Institute of Technology

The reason for "cloud"

At present, Anhui University has completed the first real Education private cloud (IaaS and desktop virtualization) in Anhui Province and even the whole east and central China region, while Xiamen Institute of Technology has deployed Xiamen's first truly meaningful private cloud (IaaS).

Talking about the original intention of implementing cloud computing, Anhui University Network Center director Shan told reporters: "As early as 2004, we have basically achieved the hardware concentration, the campus of most departments of the Department of server storage and other hardware centrally hosted in the school's data center, sharing the computer room environment and network resources." However, that is only the hardware level of concentration, server storage and other core hardware resources are still independent service in their respective applications, failed to achieve the integration and sharing of hardware resources, resource utilization is low, and equipment brand model differences, virtually increase the maintenance of complexity and workload. ”

Yerich, deputy director of Xiamen Institute of Technology Information Center, said that the school's "cloud motivation" and Anhui University is basically similar, the only difference is that they also want to use this cloud platform to create a real cloud learning environment for students, thus cultivating a group of cloud computing talent. In addition, Xiamen Institute of Technology is more fortunate that the school's cloud computing project has become the Xiamen cloud computing applications and industrial development strategy of an important pilot project, for this also won the Xiamen special funding support.

The process of building a "cloud"

"At first more clear, but do a little confused, and finally slowly clear." "Yerich describes their journey through the cloud.

"I said ' more clearly ', meaning we are very clear at the beginning of their needs, and ' confused ' mainly refers to the system selection is confused." "Yerich explained," because there are many options on the market, there are pros and cons, we really have a hard choice. Finally, we followed the original requirements to find the best fit for their own solution. ”

However, in the cloud computing solution provider and implementation business, two colleges and universities have chosen Jiangsu Golden Wisdom Education Information Technology Co., Ltd. ("Golden Wisdom Education"). Yerich said that the main value of Jin-chi education more than 10 years of university information construction experience, the school's current application systems are also developed by Jin Zhi Education. Shan shared their "Vendor screening standards," he said: "We examine from three aspects: first of all, the company's system integration ability to be strong, to understand the mainstream of servers, storage, network equipment; second, it is more clear to the application of the university; again, to have a strong ability of software development, Because there are many two development or customization of the work, need to have a software development background of the company. ”

For the specific system construction, the overall evaluation of two universities ' informatization construction is "still very smooth", for example, the whole cloud project of Xiamen Institute of Technology takes only three months from bidding to deployment. Jin Zhi education CTO Chen Yu told reporters that they encountered the difficulties in these two projects, he said: "Solve the cloud computing interoperability problem is a little bit of effort." Because cloud computing service management platform must be well compatible with the mainstream hardware and software products, with different kinds of hardware and software equipment interface, and also to meet the diverse needs of users. ”

Nowadays, the private cloud of Anhui University has 10 business systems, such as office automation system, school work management system, postgraduate management system and so on. The application of private cloud operation in Xiamen Institute of Technology is mainly the digital campus system, the mail system and the website system of the departments.

In addition to the building of cloud platform, how to do disaster preparedness in cloud environment, how to guarantee cloud security is not only a university user, but also a common concern of other enterprise users.

It is reported that the Anhui University private cloud disaster preparedness system is mainly built from two aspects, on the one hand, through EMC Veplex storage Virtualization Equipment Consolidation of the two newly purchased EMC CX-480 storage devices and the original part of the storage system to form a unified storage resource pool, The mirror function of Veplex is used to form a mirrored volume between different devices, which provides security for key business data and protects the loss of critical business data caused by physical failure of single storage device. On the other hand, the IBM TSM Cloud Backup technology provides daily data backups for virtual machines and business data in a private cloud environment, Guard against possible data loss risks due to misoperation or malicious attacks. Xiamen Institute of Technology has purchased a set of Symantec backup software, combined with VMware's VCB backup technology to achieve data backup and recovery.

In the aspect of cloud security, Anhui University mainly takes measures from two aspects of safety protection and safety detection to ensure the safety of its private cloud. The measures taken in the area of security protection include high performance, virtualized gigabit firewalls and intrusion prevention systems, Web application firewalls, VLAN isolation and access control between different customers or applications in the portal of the Cloud data center and internal deployment. The measures taken in security detection include the deployment of vulnerability scanning system in cloud data center, we and database security audit system, network traffic analysis system and so on. Xiamen Polytechnic because of the first phase of construction funds, although temporarily in this regard did not take additional measures, but Yerich revealed that this will be the next phase of the construction of a major content.

Anhui University Data Center Room

The feeling of "cloud"

"More in line with our expectations" is Yerich and Shan's unanimous answer to their respective cloud platforms. Jin Zhi Education System Integration Division general Manager Li Shanming in detail the benefits of cloud computing for colleges and universities:

First, cloud computing through the data Center resource islands, the realization of resource integration and sharing, thus greatly enhance the utilization of resources.

Second, let professional people do professional things. The school IT department can give full play to the technical advantages, responsible for the transport of IT resources and peacekeeping services, business units from the complex technical details of the liberation, focus on their own business construction and operation.

Third, the real realization of the hardware Resources unified planning, unified procurement. Business units according to their own requirements according to the standard process of resource use requirements, approval through the backend system automatically allocate resources from resource pool to create virtual machines and deploy software systems, greatly shorten the project construction cycle.

Four is to achieve unified monitoring, unified security protection, unified disaster recovery backup, so as to ensure that the system and data more safe and reliable operation.

As the pioneer of cloud computing, two university supervisors also give some heartfelt advice to other colleges and universities.

Yerich said: "Must have a clear goal, will not ' parrot ', at the same time must be fully investigated." "Outside, he thinks, not necessarily insist on independent construction, a number of colleges and universities together to build a public education cloud platform is also a good choice."

Shan that, first of all, from the management to establish a mechanism, to have a better management ideas and systems to do support, and secondly, build a cloud platform is only the first step, with a good cloud platform is more critical, so as far as possible through a variety of applications to enable college teachers and students to realize the benefits of

From the perspective of cloud computing in Anhui University and Xiamen Institute of Technology, the scale and organization form of universities and colleges make it more suitable for private cloud, and different schools can build private clouds of different sizes according to their specific needs. Chen Yu The last reminder: "For universities, cloud computing is not only a technology in the field of IT projects, but also a subversion of our thinking habits, restructuring the school procurement process, reshaping the use of business units of social engineering, need to get the attention of school leaders and strong support, At the same time, it is very necessary to get the understanding and cooperation of the relevant business unit, which requires the IT department to devote a lot of effort to communicate and coordinate adequately. ”