Campus Cloud Boosts Tsinghua's Digital Construction

Data Brief

The first campus cloud in China fully supporting IPv6

100 GB high-speed cloud drive space for everyone

Enabling 50,000 faculty and students to enjoy full IAAS services and partial PAAS services in real time

Relevant Products: Cloud computing, Storage, New Networks, Big Data, Servers

Relevant Solutions: Interconnectivity, Cloud Computing, Education

The construction of smart campus is driving us to rebuild the research, management and talent development models of colleges and universities. As one of the top universities in China, Tsinghua University has established a campus cloud platform that is industry-leading and full-featured under the support of H3C, providing 50,000 faculty and students with smarter experiences in work and learning.

As a well-endowed place with beautiful scenery and a gathering of talent, Tsinghua University is undoubtedly one of the top universities in the higher education circle and an important base for high-level talent cultivation and scientific and technological research in China. In the context of digital technology accelerating educational reform, Tsinghua University actively explores and applies various kinds of new technology to provide comprehensive and efficient information services for innovations in teaching, management and scientific research.

To meet the needs of universities on information development under the new situation, Tsinghua University begins to build a campus cloud platform which is customized for university scenarios based on the standard OpenStack + architecture by cooperating with H3C Group (H3C). The platform provides comprehensive services in computing, storage, network, security, cloud drive, application development environment and big data, and strongly supports the digital transformation of the University and the construction of a smart campus in a new era.

Full-stack cloud platform assists the smart innovation of Tsinghua

Tsinghua University is a pace-setter for campus informatization in the industry. It has completed the information transformation of each specific business which enables a full application of information technology to services for teaching, management and scientific research. With the rapid development of campus applications at the stage of Education Informatization 2.0, Tsinghua University has been actively exploring to change the traditional IT resource construction and service model. It uses cloud computing technology to achieve the integration and unified management of IT resources. It also builds the campus cloud platform that is full-featured and industry-leading, which meets the needs of timely response to IT services in mass innovative applications under the new situation.

From computing to storage, network, security and O&M, H3C provides a complete set of full-stack and fully-integrated solutions for constructing Tsinghua's campus cloud. At the upper application level, H3C's cloud platform (education version) provides a comprehensive service catalog containing more than 20 items targeted at Tsinghua's needs. The platform is also connected to Tsinghua's unified accreditation system, making it convenient for faculty and students to use, and highly scalable for future applications. As for the construction of the underlying virtualization platform, distributed storage, SDN-based cloud network and other basic resource pool. By virtue of OpenStack and other industry standard mainstream technologies, H3C has built cloud resource delivery capacity, which can provide comprehensive and rapid IaaS and partial PaaS services. At the same time, based on the actual needs of Tsinghua University, H3C has also built Tsinghua's campus cloud into the first of this kind in the industry in China that fully supports IPv6.

Information security and O&M management are something that cannot be ignored in building cloud platforms. Campus cloud of Tsinghua University adopts dynamic tenant security protection based on SDN, which realizes logical isolation and dynamic differentiated security management of different departments and research groups. In terms of the O&M management of cloud platform, Tsinghua's O&M platform for campus cloud, in combination with H3C's IT big data analysis, can achieve smart monitoring of resources. The O&M platform can rapidly locate the faults and can take preventive measures for potential problems, to avoid the poor efficiency due to the previous segmented IT management model.

Campus Cloud facilitates a more convenient and smarter experience

At present, Tsinghua' campus cloud platform has begun to widely serve the teaching, research and management of its faculty and students, providing sound IT support for Tsinghua's digital transformation and the construction of smart campus.

Faculty and students in computer science or liberal art, academicians and experts responsible for scientific research projects and administration staff can all have access to IT resource services in the applications of innovative teaching, scientific research and management by themselves through the campus cloud. The cloud has over 60 service catalogs and enables people to experience the real-time delivery on the Internet. Faculty and students only need to submit a copy of electronic application file while applying to this cloud for IT resource services. Upon approval, they can get access to the IT environment they need in just a few minutes, making efficiency greatly improved.

Moreover, Tsinghua's campus cloud provides 100 GB cloud drive services for every one of the 50,000 faculty members and students. Through the high-bandwidth campus network, the entire faculty and students can use smart phones or PAD to quickly access the information on the cloud drive at any time. Teachers can log in the cloud drive to download courseware in class, without the need of carrying U disks. This helps them avoid the security risks caused by U disks. Students can store video courseware and learning materials in the cloud drive and can retrieve and learn what they want anytime and anywhere.

Nowadays, Tsinghua University is famous for not only its long history and rich cultural heritage, but also its innovative campus cloud platform that is digitally representative. For Tsinghua University, the role of its campus cloud services will continue to expand in the future. The cloud will change from a platform providing IT resources to a "pan-service center" for transforming scientific research achievements, supporting entrepreneurship and employment and other new applications. In the future cooperation, H3C will continue to support the evolution of Tsinghua's campus cloud and its informatization to promote the digital transformation through integrated innovations and to build a smart campus.