Case Study: George Washington University achieves top-tier information availability, accuracy, and security with Nexenta

GWU is Top-of-Class with Information Availability, Accuracy, and Security from Nexenta

The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) faced rapidly growing research data needs that outstripped available storage. University caps on capacity pushed researchers to use unsecured external drives and workarounds, creating risks to data security, accessibility, and integrity while the IT team sought a cost-effective, reliable alternative they could manage themselves.

SMHS deployed a NexentaStor high-availability ZFS cluster on Dell and Supermicro hardware with SSD ZIL caching, thin provisioning, and a remote incremental backup server for disaster recovery. The rollout delivered seamless Windows-file access, automated failover, stronger data integrity, easier administration without added headcount, and lower TCO—allowing fast, scalable expansion (16 TB added for under $7,000) and freeing researchers from storage limits.

George Washington University

Garrett Fields

Technical Support Analyst GWU, SMHS