NCSA Employs Active Archive

The Active Archive Alliance announced that the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has employed an active archive to store nearline data.

The NCSA’s active archive provides 100% of the nearline storage for the Blue Waters supercomputer, which is one of the world’s largest active file repositories stored on high capacity, highly reliable enterprise tape media. The active archive is expected to scale to a capacity of 380PB, which is the equivalent of 5,054 years of HD-TV video.

NCSA’s active archive relies on Spectra Logic’s T-Finity tape libraries and IBM TS1140 technology enterprise tape drives with a capacity of 4TB native per tape cartridge. The solution enables the Blue Waters project to cost effectively keep all nearline data accessible in an active repository, perform automated data integrity verification for the data store, and deliver R/W rates of 58GB/s.

“Having an active archive is essential for keeping long-term data accessible and cost effective,” said Michelle Butler, senior technical manager, NCSA. “This easy-to-use archive system allows our scientists and engineers to focus efforts on their core research with the assurance that their data is protected and easily accessible.“

The active archive file system boasts 99.99% reliability based on uptime and is able to handle more capacity as the amount of data escalates over the coming years. The active archive uses IBM’s HPSS HSM software with DataDirect Networks, Inc.’s disk cache and provides transparent file storage for users allowing them to retrieve a file without needing to know where it is located.

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