Case Study: Prestigious University achieves accelerated data-driven research and 1PB+ storage savings with NetApp Data Fabric

Prestigious University Accelerates Data-Driven Research with a Data Fabric

A prestigious research university managing work from 20,000 students and faculty faced exploding data volumes, diverse performance and sharing requirements, and questions of trust and cost for centralized storage. Central IT needed a secure, scalable way to consolidate campus storage, protect research data, and enable fast, cost‑effective collaboration across campuses and with international partners.

The university deployed a NetApp data fabric—NetApp FAS and AFF systems with ONTAP, Snapshot and SnapCenter protection, FabricPool tiering to StorageGRID object storage, and on‑premises S3-compatible access—centralizing 95% of its storage on NetApp. The result: consolidation from eight racks to two (all‑flash migration), a 35% capacity increase, 4.3PB active storage with 1.07PB saved via dedupe/compression, fewer help‑desk recoveries, secure low‑cost global data sharing (no egress charges), and greatly improved researcher productivity.