Arizona State University Achieves Single-Digit Millisecond Latency for File Storage Using AWS Local Zones

ASU was established in 1885. In 2023, for the 9th straight year, it was ranked number one in innovation by US News & World Report. ASU is at the forefront of using new AWS services and seeks to provide agility to its teams for rapid experimentation. Within the ASU charter is the assumption of fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural, and overall health of the communities it serves, and it has taken steps to advance these goals using AWS.

For example, facilitated by AWS, ASU created the Smart City Cloud Innovation Center in 2018. “In the Cloud Innovation Center, ASU students accept challenges in the city, from homelessness to parking issues, and use AWS to build solutions,” says John Rome, deputy chief information officer at ASU. In its first 5 years, the Cloud Innovation Center successfully completed 50 such challenges.

ASU has also used many AWS instructor-led trainings for its staff. A third of its Enterprise Technology team has achieved AWS Certification, which validates technical skills and cloud expertise. The university uses over 150 AWS services, so AWS-certified staff means these services will be used more efficiently.

When ASU decided to move its file-sharing applications from on-premises to the cloud, AWS was its first choice. The most important aspect for ASU was maintaining the same latency for applications in the cloud as it had on premises. However, in the initial implementation, latency increased from no perceptible delay when accessing files to 40 milliseconds, which could cause users to associate the move to the cloud as a negative.

ASU migrated its file-sharing applications to Amazon FSx—used to launch, run, and scale feature-rich and highly performant file systems with just a few clicks. ASU moved over 400 TB of data to Amazon FSx in less than a year and initially ran the solution from the Oregon AWS Region. To reduce the latency of its solution, ASU chose to move its applications to the Phoenix AWS Local Zone, which was launched in 2022. However, at this time, Amazon FSx was not available in the Phoenix AWS Local Zone.

ASU turned to Qumulo for a file-storage solution. Qumulo provides an unstructured data solution in most AWS Regions and helps its customers manage petabytes of data with a modern, scale-out file system for high-performance workloads. ASU quickly performed a proof of concept with Qumulo, and its staff and users most sensitive to latency liked the results. The procurement process was fast because Qumulo is available on AWS Marketplace, where businesses can find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on AWS. ASU was able to cut the procurement time for this file storage solution, a lengthy and complicated process for a public institution, from 9 months to a matter of minutes.

ASU runs the Qumulo software on top of these resources to create file sharing for customers who require low latency. After successfully moving its solution to the Phoenix AWS Local Zone, ASU decreased latency to 3–4 milliseconds, a reduction of 93 percent.

To provide a reliable and secure connection from ASU data centers to the AWS Local Zone, ASU used AWS Direct Connect, a cloud service that creates a dedicated network connection to AWS. “This solution was feasible for us because we used AWS Direct Connect,” says Nate Wilken, executive director of engineering for Enterprise Technology at ASU. “The encrypted data traveling over commodity internet would have resulted in high latency and security risk.”

The university is saving 6 percent on costs with its new solution and has achieved significant benefits in cloud cost offsets after decommissioning virtualization clusters. ASU has also achieved a lower cost of ownership. “We’re using the same tooling and automation pipelines,” says Wilken. “We can deploy locally without retaining a different solution for proximal technology deployment and can apply AWS strategy to improve customer experience.”