IT Case Study: University of Washington
Nate McQueen, UW Media Development Architect
University of Washington Data Center Looks to Simplify Management with InfiniBand™ Architecture
The University of Washington has long been a leader in using TCP/IP technology to further its research and education goals. Located between Microsoft to the east and Amazon.com to the west, the university is a natural center for Internet innovation and development. All major campus buildings are wired to the campus Ethernet network, which includes almost 600 subnets, approximately 28,000 wired rooms and 38,000 connected devices and operates at speeds up to 1 gigabit. Internet connectivity is provided via Gigabit fibre to the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, an organization operated and maintained by UW. UW is also a member of the Internet-2 consortium and is using the Internet-2 in the ResearchTV high bandwidth communication project. Within the past three years the university has relied increasingly on streaming media to share lectures and information with more than 60,000 students, faculty and staff.
The University of Washington Computing and Communications department is responsible for monitoring and managing traffic levels on the University's network. Nate McQueen, UW Media Development Architect, must make sure the system stays up and running.
"Average daily traffic over the network is more than a terabyte a day," according to McQueen. "We're supporting 60,000 email accounts and transmitting uncompressed streaming audio at a rate of 1.6 ghz/second to thousands of users across the country. That's a bit higher than most radio stations."
McQueen's challenge is to manage the myriad technologies and interconnects required to support such high traffic volumes in the UW data center. Proprietary technologies provide the bandwidth needed, but are costly and, with disparate systems to manage, difficult to maintain.
Enter InfiniBand™ Architecture
InfiniBand Architecture can help relieve some of the management overhead for UW, according to McQueen. Additionally, the technology removes I/O from the server chassis, freeing up valuable space so UW can squeeze even more blade servers into its already crowded data center.
"We're currently involved in a project that connects many different components, from a Web-server to a database to a caching server to a tape system," McQueen explained. "Right now we're using Fibre Channel and switched networks. If that whole complex, tiered system were converted to InfiniBand architecture, we would benefit from the end-to-end replacement of the topology of the network. Performance is maintained, scalability increased and manageability simplified through the use of a standards-based, switched fabric interconnect. It's an intriguing possibility."
Server density is another benefit of InfiniBand Architecture, according to McQueen.
"Our server rack space is limited," he said. "Having ultra-thin blade servers that could support 1,000 uncompressed streams of audio is a beneficial component that InfiniBand Architecture could provide, since the technology takes the I/O sub-system out of the server chassis."