University of Opole × Huawei: Active-Active Data Infrastructure Empowering Digital Transformation

For a comprehensive university with a rich academic heritage, a growing research portfolio, and an expanding international footprint, data has become the critical link connecting research innovation, academic administration, and campus services. Ensuring the stable operation of core business systems and enabling intelligent data flow across complex environments have emerged as essential challenges in the digital transformation of higher education.

About the University of Opole

Located in Opole, Poland, the University of Opole (Uniwersytet Opolski) was formally established in 1994, though its higher education roots extend back nearly half a century through local teacher training traditions, and even further to the broader Silesian academic heritage. Today, the university has developed into a multidisciplinary public university comprising 12 faculties, with a steadily growing reputation in research and international cooperation.

According to the ‘Perspektywy 2026’ university ranking, published by the Perspektywy Educational Foundation, the University of Opole is tied for twenty-eighth place amongst academic institutions, 8th place in the ‘universities’ category, first place in the ‘Publications’ category, joint 8th place in research effectiveness and joint 10th place in internationalisation, which reflects its active participation in the Erasmus+ programme, the FORTHEM alliance and the European University Association network.

As the university deepens its educational and research exploration while advancing digital campus management, data has become a critical foundation for teaching, research innovation, and campus governance. The question of how to securely unlock the value of data—enabling secure flow and intelligent application—has become a defining challenge for higher education institutions in the AI era. For the University of Opole, ensuring the stable operation of core business systems, enhancing data security, and building a future-ready data infrastructure are top priorities in its digital campus development.

Active-Active Solution: Powering Always-On, Mission-Critical Services

In the AI era, It is widely recognised that the traditional single storage architecture can no longer meet the high-reliability and high-availability requirements of modern businesses. In particular, when facing potential risks such as natural disasters, human errors, or hardware and software failures, conventional single-storage architectures fail to provide adequate peace of mind.

As a diverse, open, technologically forward-looking institution with growing international collaboration, the University of Opole partnered with Huawei to deploy a gateway-free, active-active solution based on the OceanStor Dorado 5000 all-flash storage system, supporting the stable operation of various core business applications including teaching, office automation (OA), and email management.

Under this architecture, two data centres work in tandem, simultaneously carrying read and write traffic. In the extreme scenario where one storage system fails, business operations can be swiftly switched to the other storage system, minimising the impact of failures on business continuity and keeping critical applications running smoothly. Furthermore, the solution is designed with future business growth in mind and can be seamlessly upgraded to a 3DC data protection architecture, further strengthening data security and business continuity.

Designed for mission-critical workloads, the OceanStor Dorado 5000 is an all-flash storage solution that delivers exceptional performance, enterprise-grade reliability, seamless scalability, and always-on availability. Leveraging an innovative hardware platform, FlashLink® intelligent algorithms, and an end-to-end NVMe architecture, it strikes an optimal balance between performance, reliability, and cost. With advanced data storage capabilities, it solidifies the digital foundation for education and research digitalisation.

Backup Protection: Keeping a "Safety Net" for Critical Data

In the AI era, diverse business data and applications are growing at an unprecedented pace, making comprehensive data lifecycle protection increasingly important. While business continuity focuses on ensuring that services remain uninterrupted when risks occur, data protection focuses on ensuring that data can be recovered quickly and reliably in the event of unexpected incidents. Teaching and research outcomes, student and faculty data, and core campus business data—if lost or corrupted—can have long-lasting consequences. Therefore, on top of the all-flash active-active architecture, establishing a robust data backup and recovery system is essential to safeguarding data security and enhancing campus resilience.

In this collaboration, the University of Opole further deployed the OceanProtect X3000 backup storage to establish a comprehensive data protection framework alongside its production environment. Built on an end-to-end acceleration and active‑active high‑reliability architecture, the solution offers fast backup, fast recovery, high storage efficiency, and robust security, with broad software compatibility.

For example, the backup system provides industry-leading IOPS performance, allowing mainstream backup software to directly access data in backup images for faster recovery and efficient data utilization. With intelligent data reduction technologies including compression, predictive coding, and byte‑level compaction, the system achieves a reduction ratio of up to 72:1. Additionally, features like protocol encryption, link encryption, array encryption, secure snapshots, and WORM provide multi‑layer protection for backup copies.

Through this implementation, the university has established a comprehensive data infrastructure architecture of "production storage + active-active + backup protection," creating an independent, reliable, and rapid recovery pathway for its most critical data.

Making Data the Foundation of Innovation

Today, digital and intelligent technologies are continuously reshaping the way universities teach, conduct research, and govern—and data has become the vital link connecting knowledge and innovation. Though data infrastructure operates behind the scenes of campus operations, it underpins a university's digital capabilities for the future.

This collaboration with Huawei has strengthened the data foundation for the University of Opole's digital transformation. A more stable and efficient data environment enables data to better serve teaching, research, and campus management—while also providing greater space for knowledge accumulation, research exploration, and innovation.

As data becomes more deeply integrated into knowledge production, the value of technology extends beyond supporting day-to-day operations to actively driving innovation. Looking ahead, the University of Opole will continue to explore the deep integration of digital technologies with education and research—transforming data into knowledge, and knowledge into outcomes—to inject lasting momentum into the university's innovative development.