64 | WESTERN DIGITAL | PROMOTION
Secure, accessible data storage for the T
he last 20 years have seen huge innovations in information and communication technology.
Some of these advances are very visible – known and understood by the wider population, but there are many that are less visible and yet have had no lesser impact in transforming the way we work, view online content and data and share information. For the education sector, these changes have influenced everything from how learning and tuition are imparted, to physical classroom requirements and how data (in whatever format) is stored, accessed and distributed. The development of hardware has
brought computers to the desks of all institutions globally. This has changed the way we work and communicate, enabling us to create and share content in a way never
don’t reach a Megabyte but, if you are working on a presentation with photos or graphs, typically you will have a file that is at least 5MBs. Make the leap to video – especially HD video which is experiencing a huge adoption and usage rate – and you will find you use Megabytes of storage for every second that you record. The education sector might not have to invest in
storage on the same scale as YouTube, Amazon or Google but gone are the days of schools and universities merely storing student records. Not only do these different types of data need to be stored, but they also need to be easily accessible almost instantaneously. Some schools have opted for storing information in the
Cloud passing the problem (and solution) of storage to a third party. However, along with the significant loads storing in the Cloud puts on your broadband connection and the fees payable to your Cloud provider, there might be security concerns when storing data this way. Network storage is a completely different proposition.
Network atached storage (NAS) uses a number of hard drives that sit on your network. They can be accessed
"STORAGE TECHNOLOGY HAS BECOME A BUSINESS CRITICAL DECISION AND ONE THE EDUCATION SECTOR NEEDS TO CONSIDER"
before possible. The speed at which we can now create and share data has been improved by a factor of 1,500 over the last 15 years. For example, dial up internet used to run at 56Kbps (or Kilobits per second) while today we have broadband that typically runs at 20Mbps or Megabits per second. 100Mbps is freely available if you have a fibre optic connection in your area. The speed and frequency at which we now interact, search, share and store data has meant that storage technology has become a business critical decision and one that the education sector has needed to consider as part of their overall IT strategy. The advances in speed have influenced the amount of
data created and stored. Ten years ago a 20GB drive was approximately £50. Today you can buy a 1TB drive for £50 and the improvements in performance and reliability far outweigh the benefits of cost savings alone. The education sector now generates and stores more
data than could ever have been envisaged only a decade ago. The data is generated, analysed and shared to deliver not just course content but also to support the commercial running of the institutions themselves. Courses and activities use a much wider range of content including video, music, text and pictures, all of which demand significantly higher storage capacity, instant access and reliable sharing. An extreme example is the Library of Congress which
is estimated to hold 10TB of printed material and up to 20 Petabytes of audio, video and digital material. 10TB can be squeezed inside a desktop PC that has two hard drives while 20PB would require thousands of drives in a server farm. Documents and basic spreadsheets typically
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72