Case Study: University of Edinburgh achieves a scalable, resilient self-service private cloud for data‑science research with OpenStack

University of Edinburgh - Customer Case Study

Sardina Systems partnered with the University of Edinburgh to deliver a cost-effective, OpenStack-based private cloud (“Eleanor”) for researchers, with a tight timeline to be operational before the 2016 academic year. The university needed a scalable, flexible platform to support data‑intensive workloads (Spark, Hadoop) and an initial deployment sized for 200+ hypervisors while integrating with existing IT services and minimizing total cost of ownership.

Sardina delivered a FishOS‑based operational architecture including Ceph storage, distributed virtual routers and highly available management services, plus ML-driven automation for optimal VM placement and automatic failure handling. The result was a resilient, service-assured research cloud that complements the university’s Eddie 3 service, enables zero‑downtime upgrades, improves resource and energy utilization, and provides a clear upgrade path from FishOS Starter to FishOS White.

University of Edinburgh