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Storage

Data Storage at Stanford

In an academic community where research generates terabytes of data, a storage service is an essential part of the infrastructure. IT Services currently provides the University with storage for about 400 terabytes of data. Storage capacity has been doubling approximately every two years.

Three tiers of service provide flexibility to support enterprise, departmental, and individual requirements. (Tiers refer to class of service and consist of three components: performance, reliability, and resilience.) This multi-tiered approach ranges from high throughput and highly-available storage for production databases, to low-cost storage for web content, text files, images, computer programs, and other forms of online information.

Storage Service Tiers

Type	Description	Backup
High Performance (Tier 1)	Designed for highly-transactional production databases and Enterprise Resource Planning systems, this tier constitutes the most reliable, flexible, and expensive storage platform offered by our storage vendors.	No; separate service subscription required
Medium Performance (Tier 2)	Balances performance and reliability with cost. Storage devices in this group do not have the very high availability combined with performance requirements of the high-end storage devices, but can be flexible and provide a similar level of performance as the high-end storage.	No; separate service subscription required
Low Cost Central Storage (Tier 3)	For web content, office documents, digital media, etc. Uses the University's general-purpose public network. Storage is significantly cheaper, or free; AFS storage is provided without charge to all full-service SUnet ID account holders. File protocols include (but are not limited to): AFS CIFS	AFS; yes. CIFS; separate service subscription required

The Storage service tiers offer:

• Security—Authenticated access, network encryption, and access control. It is flexible in its authentication requirements to meet the needs of private data and shared data confidential to a particular group, as well as distribution of data to the Stanford campus as a whole.
• Cross-platform support—The Stanford community uses Windows, Mac OS X, and multiple versions of UNIX and Linux on its desktops, laptops, and servers. Storage must be shared among all platforms.
• Scalability—Simultaneous connections from thousands of separate clients. The Storage service tiers handle hundreds of simultaneous client connections for thousands of clients.

Backup

High Performance and Medium Performance storage tiers do not include backup service. Backup and storage are two separate services; backup service is by subscription. The storage team works with clients to customize backups to the needs of their applications.

The AFS Low Cost Central storage service does include automatic backup. The CIFS storage service is by subscription.

For More Information...

See the Tier 1, 2, and 3 service description pages, which include service level descriptions, rates, and information on how to order, or send email to su-storage@lists.stanford.edu.