HLRN Achieves 400 Percent Performance Acceleration and Full Campus Wide Collaboration Using DDN Storage Systems

LEIPZIG, Germany, June 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) 2014

News Facts

• The North German Supercomputing Alliance (HLRN), operated by a team of experts at the High Performance Computing Center at Leibniz University in Hannover (RRZN) and Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB), has deployed DataDirect Networks (DDN) storage to provide the foundation for data-intensive applications, concurrent computations and Big Data analytics.
• HLRN gives scientists and researchers across seven Northern German states secure and reliable access to powerful, distributed supercomputer systems. Ranking nos. 120 and 121 on the TOP500 list, respectively, the RRZN and ZIB HPC centers drive advanced scientific research in the fields of physics, chemistry, fluid dynamics, engineering and the environment.
• More than 300 scientists are actively engaged in approximately 80 ongoing research projects that require sophisticated calculations and computations with up to 30 different software codes to address both small and extremely large datasets. This level of data-intensive research and collaboration places significant demands on HLRN's supercomputing storage infrastructure where high-bandwidth performance, scalability and reliability are critical.
• To meet the dynamic demands created by the proliferation of massive unstructured data types as well as extremely fast data sharing between scientists at the ZIB and RRZN sites, HLRN deployed DDN^TM high-bandwidth SFA®12K storage platform and GRIDScaler™ Parallel File System solutions to best support the diverse research requirements of the HLRN community.
• Using the world's fastest file storage technology from DDN, the HLRN Alliance will be able to achieve an overall aggregate bandwidth performance of more than 50 gigabytes per second, which will represent nearly 4x greater performance over its previous system.
• As a result, with new investment in petascale storage infrastructure, RRZN will be able to support cutting-edge algorithms as well as increased scientific modeling and simulations to drive scientific breakthroughs and collaborate more with other major supercomputing collaborations and initiatives, including Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) and the European exascale project (NUMEXAS). This will allow the HLRN Alliance to better support a range of new scientific endeavors, from developing new kinds of molecular modeling to expediting the design of new drugs or creating wind stream simulations to improve the architecture of individual buildings in major cities.

Tweet this: HLRN accelerates time to research w/4X performance gains using @DDN_limitless storage http://bit.ly/1io01KP

DDN Facilitates Fast, Reliable and Scalable Access to Different Types of Research Data

• Currently, HLRN has 4PBs of storage to support its RRZN site, with plans to scale to 10PBs of vital project data within two years.
• DDN's fully agnostic SFA Platform serves as a high-performance building block for HLRN's Lustre® and GPFS parallel file systems to support bandwidth-intensive, intermediate work files while ensuring high availability for vital program and research results.
• With policy-driven snapshots built into these platforms, RRZN can provide an extra measure of protection against accidental data deletion, corruption or viruses.
• According to RRZN, DDN's ability to reduce energy consumption by eliminating unnecessary storage enclosures, switches, fans and power supplies will help reduce data center, power and cooling requirements for lowered Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Supporting Quotes

PD Dr. Steffen Schulze-Kremer, head of the HPC department at RRZN

• "It was important that the design of our high-performance storage was open, reliable and predictable, so the infrastructure would meet our needs well into the future."
• "One goal is to have fail-safe storage, so the ability to synchronize DDN storage between our two sites will provide an extra layer of reliability and data protection. With DDN, we will have both the capacity and flexibility to switch between the two sites easily and offer a higher level of service to the researchers."
• "With our general-purpose installation, HLRN can handle a broad range of programs and still have the flexibility to collaborate and connect with other supercomputing initiatives worldwide. This enables us to cooperate with groups from science, economy and society to conduct vital research with a global impact."

Supporting Resources

• Read the HLRN Alliance Case Study
• About SFA12K
• About GRIDScaler
• About DDN's leadership in supercomputing
• Follow DDN via Blog and Twitter

About DataDirect Networks

DataDirect Networks (DDN) is the world leader in massively scalable storage. Our data storage and processing solutions and professional services enable content-rich and high growth IT environments to achieve the highest levels of systems scalability, efficiency and simplicity. DDN enables enterprises to extract value and deliver business results from their information. Our customers include the world's leading online content and social networking providers, high performance cloud and grid computing, life sciences, media production, and security and intelligence organizations. Deployed in thousands of mission critical environments worldwide, DDN's solutions have been designed, engineered and proven in the world's most scalable data centers to ensure competitive business advantage for today's information powered enterprise. For more information, go to www.ddn.com or call 1-800-837-2298.

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