LRZ Supercomputer Backups and Archives on IBM Tape

IBM Corporation announced that the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) has implemented an IBM tape storage system to provide up to 16.5PB of scientific data archiving and backup for the center’s SuperMUC supercomputer.

A petabyte is roughly the equivalent of all the content in the U.S. Library of Congress – times 100.

Designed by IBM in 2010 for the LRZ of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the SuperMUC combines 155,000 general purpose core processors with 320TB of main memory to help scientists from across Europe study all fields of science, from the simulation of the evolution of the universe under the influence of dark matter, to the propagation of earthquakes, and much more.

Unique to the design, is the SuperMUC’s ‘High Temperature Liquid Cooling’ system that uses hot water to cool the system processors rather than compressed air and fans. As a result, the multicore computer consumes 40% less energy than the LRZ’s previous supercomputers, reducing the organization’s energy costs.      .

In addition to the processing and cooling, the SuperMUC features 12PB of permanent disk storage. To provide archiving and backup storage for the center’s primary and secondary scientific data, IBM teamed with business partner SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH, to create a high-capacity, highly-scalable storage system that consists of computers, disk systems and two massive tape libraries in a SAN.

"What we needed was a system that could store the data streams of one of the fastest computers in Europe, using standard components to keep costs low," said Werner Baur, director of the Storage Group at LRZ. "It had to be scalable so that it is able to keep up with the development stages of the SuperMUC and it had to be able to integrate with our IT environment. That’s exactly what we’ve got."

High-performance solution with flexible components
The archiving solution consists of two scalable IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library systems equipped with 22 LTO-5 drives and 11,000 tape cartridges. All told, the solution has a storage capacity of 16.5PB and is scalable to 40PB.

An IBM System x3850 acts as the archive server and is responsible for the management of metadata, the control of the mass storage device, and the control of the data flow. To ensure fast access to archived data, IBM System Storage DS3500 and IBM Storwize V7000 systems are used as high capacity disks, along with 6TB of SSD memory.

"The project at LRZ achieves the tremendous possibilities of IBM Storage technology for a challenging IT environment," said IBM Storage manager, Michael Achtelik. "Through its expandability, the system also provides a long-term solution."