Texas Advanced Computing Center Deploys 20PB Big Data Hub

The Texas Advanced Computing Center
(TACC) at The University of Texas in
Austin, an advanced computing center, is
using DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN) to
deploy a high-speed global parallel file storage system accessible to all TACC
resources and visualization systems.

The system will scale up and be
expandable in the coming years.

Since its founding in 2001, TACC has grown rapidly by enabling discoveries that
advance science and society through the application of advanced computing
technologies. With this growth, TACC also has seen its data explode by more
than 40% year-on-year.

Now with TACC’s latest petascale HPC system in production, Stampede, and more
new systems coming in 2013, the center needed a high performance storage
solution that could connect all of TACC’s computing and visualization systems
and scale to anticipate research demands in the future. After a competitive
review, TACC selected DDN for its price-performance and ability to scale the
system 5x beyond the initial purchased configuration.

Building on recent DDN HPC wins such as Oak Ridge
National Laboratory and Zuse
Institute Berlin, this latest announcement with TACC reinforces that
compute-intensive organizations around the world continue to validate DDN
technology where TCO, scalability and
performance are requirements.

Using DDN storage including SFA12K and SFA7700 TM platforms and EXAScaler
parallel file storage appliance, TACC has been able to decrease power, energy
usage and costs, while increasing its storage capacity as compared with its
previous parallel file storage system.

Using the Lustre file system running on DDN storage servers, TACC increased its
storage capacity and IO performance using an IB connected file system
with more than 20PB in capacity that delivers more than 250GB/s+ in throughput
to support nearly 10 petaflops (or 10 quadrillions calculations per second) of
peak computing capability.

TACC Data-Defined Datacenter Infrastructure
Supports
Critical Research Advances

• With more than 120 staff and students, TACC operates several of the most
  powerful supercomputers and visualization systems in the world, and the network
  and data storage infrastructure to support them.
• Stampede, among other HPC systems at TACC, provides the computing power for a
  complex computational projects.
• Researchers will use TACC computing resources powered by DDN storage to support
  research across several different fields including brain tumor imaging, black
  hole physics, and seismic hazard mapping. For example, researchers from the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC)
  are using Stampede to predict the frequency of damaging earthquakes in
  California for the latest Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast
  (UCERT3) which forecasts the probability of all earthquakes throughout a region
  and over a specified time span. This data is incorporated into the US
  Geological Survey’s National Seismic Hazard Maps which are then used to set
  building codes and insurance rates.

Dr. Jay Boisseau, director of TACC, The University of Texas at Austin, said: "TACC enables thousands of scientists to
conduct groundbreaking research that advances science and society using our
powerful computing technologies. We have to advance our capabilities rapidly to
help enable and accelerate their discoveries, and increasingly this depends on
providing massive data management and storage capabilities. We’re pleased to
partner again with DDN to deploy a tremendous new resource for open science
depending on ‘big data’ – a 20PB file system, fully integrated with our
powerful computing and visualization systems that will continue to grow to
support the research tackling the most challenging problems.

"DDN’s powerful and scalable storage
solutions are exactly what we need right now, as we grow our support for many
new ‘big data’ problems in science and engineering research. We want to help
researchers solve the most important and challenging problems, and this
increasingly depends on rapid access to massive data. This new DDN solution
will provide a foundation for researchers to analyze data and make new
discoveries."