Dot Hill Storage Systems Allow Caltech to Study Carbon Dioxide From Space

The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has implemented Dot Hill AssuredSAN storage systems to manage data acquired by the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2, NASA‘s first dedicated Earth remote sensing satellite to study atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from space.

Until now, no organization has been able to acquire this valuable data.

According to a recent Scientific American article, about 40 billion tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every year as a result of human activities-around 5.5 tons per person on Earth. Based on this figure, scientists have estimated that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere should be increasing by about one percent a year, but it’s only increasing at half that rate, which begs the question-where is the rest of the CO2 going?

NASA’s OCO-2 project, in collaboration with Caltech’s TCCON project, tries to answer that question by combing space-based and ground-based global measurements of atmospheric CO2 with the precision, resolution, and coverage needed to characterize sources and sinks on regional scales. OCO-2 will also be able to quantify CO2 variability over the seasonal cycles year after year.

To manage the large volumes of data cultivated from TCCON and process OCO-2 data, Caltech worked with Partners Data Systems, Inc. to implement a Dot Hill AssuredSAN 4834 FC storage system, directly attached to four file servers running GlusterFS, a scale-out NAS file system.

Caltech is managing 60TB of data and can expand to 150TB with its current investment. Although capacity was an important consideration, storage controller performance was the primary reason Caltech selected Dot Hill.

“We are currently storing over 66 million files, and our researchers and outside collaborators need to be able to access that data as quickly as possible, even when administrative jobs such as backup and data assurance are running,” said Scott Dungan, senior systems administrator, geological and planetary sciences, Caltech. “When I started to compare performance of storage controllers, Dot Hill was head and shoulders above the rest. Partners Data provided the individual attention our department needed and Dot Hill really came through to support the project. Our storage infrastructure will serve us well for at least the next five years, allowing us to measure the changes in atmospheric abundance of CO2 in time and at TCCON stations around the world, from which we can calculate CO2 emissions. We hope to determine where the CO2 is being emitted, what is absorbing it, and at what rate. None of this has ever really been studied before with this level of precision.“

“Caltech’s selection of the AssuredSAN 4834, is testimony to the exceptional performance that our 4004 storage controller delivers,” said Jim Jonez, VP marketing, Dot Hill. “All Dot Hill AssuredSAN 4004 systems are engineered to deliver exceptional functionality, reliability and performance. By working closely with go-to-market partners such as Partners Data Systems, we are able to put Dot Hill technology in the hands of organizations like Caltech who can make an impact on the future of the planet.“

AssuredSAN 4004 storage arrays can scale to more than a PB of storage with additional expansion arrays. The dual redundant design eliminates ‘single points-of-failure,’ which can disrupt business operations. With demonstrated 99.999% availability, the AssuredSAN 4004 family of arrays has dual active-active controllers for higher performance and failover, hot swappable drives, dual power supplies and fans.

The AssuredSAN 4000 Series is also available with Dot Hill’s RealStor version 2.0 application workload-aware intelligence software, which maximizes performance and simplifies management of hybrid storage arrays. Other flash-based storage solutions cannot adequately address the constantly changing data challenges faced by organizations today. Featuring multiple patent-pending technologies, the AssuredSAN next-generation solution with RealStor 2.0 raises the bar on hybrid array capability and stands alone in its ability to deliver performance and optimal real-time data placement, while maintaining ease-of-use, affordability and density. Compatible with Dot Hill’s high-density chassis counterparts, including Ultra56 and Ultra48, AssuredSAN 4004 storage solutions offer high storage networking bandwidth, enabling organizations to do more business with less capital infrastructure.