Texas Advanced Computing Center Deploys 20PB Big Data Hub using DataDirect Networks High-Performance Storage System

LEIPZIG, Germany, June 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- International Supercomputing Conference, DDN Booth #305

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News Facts

• The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas in Austin, one of the leading advanced computing centers in the world, is using DataDirect Networks (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 easily 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  percent 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 seamlessly 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 total cost of ownership, scalability and performance are critical requirements.
• Using DDN^® storage including SFA12K^® and SFA7700 ^TM platforms and EXAScaler^TM parallel file storage appliance, TACC has been able to significantly decrease power, energy usage and costs, while dramatically 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 InfiniBand 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.

Tweet this: .@TACC supercomputers powered with @DDN_limitless storage help predict earthquakes http://bit.ly/11kgchm #BigData #HPC

Using DDN Storage, 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 variety of 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 U.S. Geological Survey's National Seismic Hazard Maps which are then used to set building codes and insurance rates.

Supporting Quotes

Dr. Jay Boisseau, director of TACC, The University of Texas at Austin:

• "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."

Supporting Resources

• About DDN
• About DDN's Supercomputing capabilities
• About DDN EXAScaler
• About SFA 12K
• About Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas in Austin
• About Stampede
• Follow DDN via Blog and Twitter

About DDN
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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