Kanazawa University Selects Cloudian Object Storage for Managing and Protecting Research Data

Cloudian Solution Provides Highly Scalable, Secure and Cost-effective On-premises Storage that Integrates Seamlessly with Public Cloud

TOKYO, Sept. 7, 2021 – Cloudian® today announced that Kanazawa University has deployed Cloudian’s HyperStore® object storage software as part of a major initiative to strengthen the University’s research infrastructure and support system, including big data management and analysis. The Cloudian solution enables Kanazawa to store and protect its sensitive research data on-premises and cost effectively and easily scale as this data grows.

With origins dating back over 150 years, today Kanazawa University’s basic philosophy is to be an “education-oriented research university open to the region and the world.”  To enhance its research infrastructure, the University decided to use the GakuNin RDM platform, a research data management service provided by the National Institute of Informatics that enables secure data management and sharing among laboratories and collaborators across organizations.

Currently, GakuNin RDM provides 100 GB of capacity per researcher as “standard storage” free of charge. However, because this is insufficient capacity for advanced research, Kanazawa University recognized that it would need a much more scalable storage foundation for managing and protecting its data, particularly sensitive data that could not be stored in a public cloud.

After looking at different on-premises storage options, the University decided to deploy Cloudian’s HyperStore object storage software.

“Cloudian has a proven track record in Japan and overseas,” said Takuya Matsuhira, a senior technical staff member of the Information Systems Division, Engineering and Technology Department, at Kanazawa University. “Based on this and our own evaluation of HyperStore, we determined that it was the best solution for meeting our on-premises data management and protection needs.”

GakuNin RDM uses the S3 API to connect to external storage, so HyperStore’s fully native S3 compatibility made the integration very easy. In addition, because we have a hybrid cloud model with public cloud storage for less sensitive data, Cloudian’s S3 compatibility gives us the flexibility to move data to and from our public cloud storage in the future.”

Currently, the University allocates storage space to each user, and HyperStore’s multi-tenancy and user-friendly interface make it easy to operate. In addition, HyperStore can issue IAM and S3 API access key IDs and secret keys to each user, which provides a high level of data security.

Although Kanazawa University’s infrastructure modernization project is just getting started, the University is already very pleased with what it’s seeing.

“HyperStore is delivering the scalability and cost efficiency we need to support our research objectives,” said Yoshihiro Takata, Associate Professor, Academic System Division, Emerging Media Initiative. “Most importantly, it’s enabled us to create an environment where highly sensitive research data can be securely managed on-premises and easily connected to GakuNin RDM.”

Moving forward, Mr. Takata hopes to share this experience and know-how with other universities to expand their research data management efforts.

“In the future, we believe that educational data transformation initiatives will require a new teaching materials data management (TDM) infrastructure, and we are looking forward to using HyperStore as a storage platform to safely store both sensitive research data and next-generation teaching materials data within the university,” he said. “We are also excited about the further evolution of HyperStore, including technologies that will help us better utilize our research data and gain greater analytical insights from it.”

About Cloudian

Cloudian is the most widely deployed independent provider of object storage. With a native S3 API, it brings the scalability and flexibility of public cloud storage into the data center while providing ransomware protection and reducing TCO by up to 70% compared to traditional SAN/NAS and public cloud. The geo-distributed architecture enables users to manage and protect object and file data across sites—on-premises and in the cloud—from a single platform. Available as software or appliances, Cloudian supports conventional and containerized applications. More at cloudian.com.

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