Deploying and Extending On-Premise Cloud Storage Based on ownCloud

The conception and implementation of an on-premise cloud storage is a significant, but also necessary step in the development of modern data centers. Providing seamless access to data from multiple devices and from any network-connected location world-wide is a mandatory requirement for the data management and also expected by users, as most of them already use commercial offerings such as drop box, box, sky drive and many others. These demands raise activities of almost every educational driven unification like "Deutsches Forschungsnetz" (DFN) or "Zentren für Kommunikation und Information sverarbeitung" (ZKI). This paper describes our concept and implementation for on-premise cloud storage, designed to service up to 40.000 students and faculty members of TU Berlin. The solution is based on the open-source project own Cloud, which is extended with functionalities for sharing files among research groups, based on integration with the TUB identity management system. The paper also presents an experimental evaluation in a real-life scenario and summarizes pitfalls occurred during the rollout of such a large system.