Celeros

Data Protection. It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law.LSI, Seagate and Celeros combine to enable protection for student records at The Graduate School at The Virginia Institute of Technology.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act* (FERPA) is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education, including The Graduate School at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Jeremy Sippel, IT director for the Virginia Tech Graduate School, was tasked with responsibil-ity to implement the university’s policy based on state and federal regulations that flow from FERPA.

“Our most significant storage issue related to the emerging need, and ultimately, requirement for encryption of data,” Sippel explained. “With data loss being reported at an ever increasing rate, to manage the liability of data exposure not to mention the potential negative impact on those whose data is exposed, our depart-ment needed to identify every possible avenue to ensure data is stored and communicated in a secure manner.”

“Due to the federal and state regulations we are bound by, encryption is effectively a require-ment. University policy, in fact, does explicitly require the encryption of sensitive data at rest.

So as a standard business practice here at The Graduate School, we anticipate that any future storage procurement will require built in en-cryption,” he continued.

“Having established a multi-layer protection scheme for data in motion,” Sippel said recently, “we had more of a challenge for data at rest. We implemented the usual array of firewall, virus protection and IPsec measures necessary to meet our obligations as they relate to data on our networks, but we were having trouble finding a solution we felt would be effective for protecting data at rest.”

“After looking at a number of alternative software solutions for encrypting shared data at rest, we felt that the choices available had not matured to the point of providing suffi-ciently transparent encryption methods,” Sippel concluded.

The Graduate School at Virginia Tech looked at a number of potential solutions for encrypting data at rest, and settled on the recommendation of their technology partners at Celeros to evalu-ate and to implement disk based encryption technologies from Seagate with key manage-ment from LSI.

Data, and the information it contains, is the foundation upon which knowledge is built, knowledge that improves lives and makes the modern world possible, knowledge that is painstakingly developed by individuals at leading institutions around the world, institutions like The Virginia Institute of Technology, also known as Virginia Tech.

To accumulate the data, the information, the knowledge needed to make the world a better place is a privilege and responsibility to be taken very seriously. To protect same is, in many cases, required by law.

Case Study

“The risk of storing data on servers

without hardware-based encryp-

tion is too great, the potential

costs too high. Seagate is pleased

to be providing Constellation ES

SEDs with powerful government-

grade security to lock down stu-

dent information on Virginia Tech

servers while meeting the school’s

requirements for high-capacity

storage.”

Henry Fabian Seagate Executive Director of Product Marketing

Celeros Case Study 2

The combination of disk based encryption on Seagate’s Constellation® ES Self-Encrypted Drives (SEDs) and SafeStore™ key management from LSI, running on the LSI® MegaRAID® SAS 9280-4i4e controller card, gave Sippel several features he felt were ‘must haves’ in Virginia Tech’s decision process: The solution was not ap-plication dependent. Sippel didn’t have to worry about administering rights and privileges for us-ers as they moved around the globe. Sippel also wanted to avoid the performance overhead he thought a software-based solution might entail.

Jeremy went on to explain, “The data we consume does not allow a practical method to isolate sensitive versus not. We are unable to predict the schedule for consumption of our services, and many of them are public facing, not allowing for a scheduled state of offline. Based on our assessment of the solutions cur-rently available we felt, the only viable alterna-tive, currently, is drive based encryption.

“The basic concern we address with this method is loss of a drive through theft or mistake. While our current drive disposal practices utilize a secure multi-rewrite of random data across the drive, the concept that the only data being written to the drives is encrypted provides an additional layer of reassurance that data will not be exposed.”

In addition to the very specific encryption re-quirements, the Information Technology group supporting The Graduate School under Sippel was tasked to support the general require-ments that many production data centers have to manage including exponential data growth,

rack density and the related HVAC issues, system and network reliability, performance, and avail-ability.

“Snapshots and replication were important features on our requirements list, not typically found in lower cost solutions,” according to Sip-pel. “Celeros provides those as standard features in the platform they recommended to us. Our need for replication was viewed as a better fit for us to generate online backup and archives than the traditional disk-to-disk-to-tape solu-tions, and snapshots provided us quick recovery from user error in file management.”

“Celeros, with LSI based key management and Seagate SEDs, has provided a transparent solu-tion for our encryption needs. Implementation was well documented, and achieved within half an hour including hardware installation and we don’t seem to be suffering a performance penalty, either.

“We have compared gross throughput between a unit with encryption implemented and one without. We found the hardware based encryp-tion provided equivalent throughput numbers with the unit that did not have encryption implemented.

“An ancillary concern was the management interface. Given cost issues, we were willing to sacrifice ease of configuration but we didn’t have to. Calling on our experience with a wide range of management interfaces and the excel-lent in-line User Interface (UI) documentation we found we were able to find our way through the interface and configure the devices quickly and easily,” Sippel concluded.

“Over the years Celeros has

emerged as a vendor providing a

feature rich and reliable platform

acceptable for small scale imple-

mentations, yet enterprise in qual-

ity and support.

Celeros, leveraging LSI and

Seagate technologies, provided

a solution which allowed our

department to deliver a cost ef-

fective solution for reliable data

storage and encryption, with op-

tions for future growth that don’t

require wholesale replacement

of any equipment. This solution

purports to provide a long life al-

lowing growth along the way.”

Jeremy Sippel, Director, IT, The Graduate School, Virginia Institute of Technology

The Challenge

The Graduate School at Virginia Tech needed to add storage and storage management capabilities much like any organization grappling with data growth that some analysts put as high as 50% - 60% annually. In addition, the Graduate School is required by federal and state regulations and university policy to take steps to protect student records while the data is in flight and while at rest.

The Solution

Jeremy Sippel, Director of IT Services for the Graduate School at Virginia Tech developed a plan to protect data in motion and explored various technologies for encryption of data at rest, finally settling on a combination of LSI encryption key management and on-disk encryption capabilities offered by Seagate, in a recommended, integrated and supported platform provided by LSI channel reseller partner Celeros.

The Result

According to Sippel, the systems provided by Celeros offer all the data protection and management features of a branded solution from a top tier vendor, without the high cost. Support for data growth, snapshot, replication, and encryption were all incorporated and supported by Celeros using technologies from LSI and Seagate.

Celeros Case Study 3

Product Overviews

LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-4i4e

Four Port Internal/Four Port External 6Gb/s PCI Express SATA+SAS RAID Controller

MegaRAID SATA+SAS controllers provide a new level of reliability, availability and performance to businesses that are facing storage challenges driven by unprecedented data growth. The MegaRAID SAS 9280-4i4e controller, with four internal and four external ports, supports both internal drive storage and external JBOD expansion. Using the external SAS ports, multiple JBODs can be con-nected to a server, providing a scalable and affordable solution for growing storage requirements.

LSI MegaRAID SafeStore Software

Whether it is sensitive customer information, intellectual property or proprietary data that helps a company reach its strategic objectives, a company’s data may be its most valuable asset. If this data is misplaced or stolen, organizations run the risk of lost revenue, legal implications, and a tarnished reputation. The unfortunate truth is that an organization’s data is becoming increasingly vulnerable as lost, accidentally exposed or breached data is becoming more and more commonplace in today’s environment. With data security risks on the rise, an influx of government mandates and regulations for securing data have been implemented and are becoming part of the corporate landscape for many. Eliminating the exposure of private data now simply viewed as a sound business practice.

Seagate® Constellation® ES Self-Encrypting Drives

The Seagate Constellation ES drive is the perfect 3.5-inch hard drive for demanding business envi-ronments that require highly reliable and efficient high capacity storage with seamless enterprise integration. Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) and FIPS 140-2 Validated™ SED security options available to help you protect your data-at-rest and be government compliant.

Seagate Constellation ES fifth-generation drives lead the industry with a range of high capacity enterprise drive options. Available in both 6Gb/s SAS and SATA interfaces, these drives feature enterprise-class reliability with the power and performance efficiencies that make them ideal for capacity-optimized, 24x7 multi-drive server and storage environments.

Celeros XD100S Platform Model X100S

EzSANFiler XD Series from Celeros is the fusion of best of breed EzSAN XL Series and EzNAS XN Se-ries functionality in an integrated, all-in-one sys-tem that allows you to centralize and consolidate your storage in one platform and use the same storage pool to provide block level storage to databases, email servers,… as well as file sharing services within the same platform. It eliminates multiple platform requirements, enables a more efficient use of storage space, eases the manage-ment and administrative burdens, and thus leads to a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

EzSANFiler XD Series not only supports iSCSI SAN natively, it is also capable of supporting Fibre Channel SAN functionality and a variety of Net-work File Services such as Microsoft CIFS (SMB), NFS (Linux, Unix, MacOSX), AppleTalk, FTP and SecureFTP in a single appliance.

XD series is one truly unified storage appliance that brings together cutting edge SAS, SATA, SAN, NAS, and Backup technologies in one single system offering unprecedented ease of manage-

“We are fortunate to work with

a very sophisticated client like

Jeremy and The Graduate School

at Virginia Tech. They did their

homework and brought a de-

manding, but well thought out set

of requirements to us for manag-

ing and protecting vital student

records. With the technology avail-

able from leading suppliers like

LSI and Seagate, we were able to

meet their needs by offering our

XD100S platform populated with

the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-4i4e

controller, LSI SafeStore software,

and Seagate Constellation ES

SEDs.”

Hossein Alaee CEO at Celeros

C E L E R O S X D 100 S P L AT F O R M M O D E L X 100 S

Chassis 1U (1.7”)

Drives 4 x 3.5” Seagate Constellation ES Drives ST2000NM0021

Capacity 8TB (4 x 2TB)

Processor Pentium Dual Core

Cache 2GB

Network 2 x 1GbE

RAID 0,1,5, 6, 10, 50, 60

Expansion Wide SAS Expander Module

Power Supplies 280W AC Power Supplies w/ PFC450W (1+1) redundant PS Optional

Cooling 4 x 40 mm redundant fans

Temperature 10deg – 35deg C ( 50deg – 95deg F)

Humidity 8% - 90% non-condensing

Dimensions W 17.2” x D19.8” x H1.7”

Indicators Power, Network, HDD LEDs

For more information and sales office locations, please visit the LSI web sites at: lsi.com lsi.com/channel

LSI, LSI and Design logo, MegaRAID, SafeStore and CacheCade are trademarks or registered trademarks of LSI Corporation. All other brand and product names may be trademarks of their respective companies.

LSI Corporation reserves the right to make changes to any products and services herein at any time without notice. LSI does not assume any responsibility or liability arising out of the application or use of any product or service described herein, except as expressly agreed to in writing by LSI; nor does the purchase, lease, or use of a product or service from LSI convey a license under any patent rights, copyrights, trademark rights, or any other of the intellectual property rights of LSI or of third parties.

Copyright ©2011 by LSI Corporation. All rights reserved. August 2011

*(FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99)

About LSI Partners

Celeros Corp. is the leading provider of full featured, high performance, low cost iSCSI based IP storage area network (SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS) and SANFiler (SAN & NAS combined) appliances that empower the small and medium sized enterprises with the benefits of consolidation and cen-tralization of storage assets while leveraging their IP infrastructure and inter-networking expertise. Celeros solutions are designed for ease of manage-ment and administration and set up in minutes. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. For more information please visit www.celeros.com

Seagate®, a long-standing LSI technology partner, drives innovative enterprise-class storage solutions. First to market with 6Gbps SAS hard drives, we offer the peace-of-mind that results from deploying solutions that enhance business continuity. Seagate’s Savvio® and Constellation hard drives optimize performance, reliability, capacity, availability and security. Customers look to our OEMs and system builders to boost efficiencies, minimize complex-ity while reducing costs and administrative overhead by leveraging best-in-breed technological advances including SFF (small form factor), SAS (serial attached SCSI) and SED (Self-Encrypting Drives). Seagate delivers optimized, robust enterprise hard drives where choice, security and simplicity provide businesses with a sustainable storage strategy. For more information, visit http://www.seagate.com/

Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the Commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 215 un-dergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 30,000 students and manages a research portfolio of nearly $400 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.

The Graduate School is responsible for the development, administration, and evaluation of graduate education throughout the University. Graduate School personnel work in partnership with the faculty, program chairs and department heads, the deans, graduate students (particularly through the Graduate Student Association), and the Commission on Graduate Studies & Policies (CGS&P) to further Graduate education at Virginia Tech. To learn more about the University, visit http://www.vt.edu/ . More information on The Graduate School at Virginia Tech can be found at http://graduateschool.vt.edu/.

Build Today

You can use the same LSI RAID technology as Celeros and The Graduate School at Virginia Tech for your high performance requirements today. Contact David Graas at david.graas@lsi.com for more information.

ment and administration. Administrators can use the intuitive XD Series web based interface to create a Fibre Channel SAN volume for high-speed video editing, and use the same interface to allocate an iSCSI volume for their Exchange servers or SQL Database. Same simple GUI interface can then be used to allocate a NAS volume, create a share folder and make it available to Windows or Linux users.