Implementation of Nirvana Storage Resource Broker 2008 at infoGROUP

General Atomics‘ Nirvana Division exhibited the latest release of Nirvana SRB 2008 at Storage Networking World and announced the successful implementation of Nirvana SRB 2008 at infoGROUP, provider of data and interactive resources that enables targeted sales, effective marketing and insightful research solutions.

Following a late-2008 installation, a Nirvana-based data grid is currently operational and will federate nearly one hundred terabytes of data across three of infoGROUP’s computer operations centers in the Omaha area. The technology, originally developed at supercomputing facilities founded and operated by General Atomics, has been commercialized by GA’s Nirvana division. The software was previously used to manage high-value image, sensor, forensic and other pattern data in collaborative research, aerospace, environmental, intelligence and security applications. It was adapted to infoGROUP’s infrastructure to control operational complexity and better respond to the customers’ need for more comprehensive data combinations, reporting, and views.

The project, led by Jason Hagerty, System Architect for infoGROUP, spans multiple sites, federates both legacy and advanced heterogeneous storage systems, incorporates legacy applications, and manages several tiers of storage within an automated ILM scheme.

The Director of GA’s Nirvana division, Constantin Scheder, said: "We are pleased to have this opportunity to apply Nirvana’s capabilities in such a demanding, complex commercial environment. Jason and the very capable infoGROUP IT team adapted our technology in a truly innovative way."

"We needed a way to simplify our architecture operationally," said Jason Hagerty. "Nirvana allows us to do that within our existing AD infrastructure plus provides a way to advance our plans for extensible metadata schemas and to present new, more valuable data views for our clients."