TRIUMF Helps Thousands of Scientists Unlock the Secrets of the Universe with a Converged Architecture Built on DDN Storage and Embedded dCache

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 24, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

News Facts

• TRIUMF, one of the world's leading subatomic physics laboratories and Canada's national laboratory, is using DDN® Storage SFA® high-performance engine in combination with dCache, a global data distribution service, to help 3,000 scientists at 177 institutions across 38 countries collaborate on major scientific discoveries as part of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). As an ATLAS Tier-1 data centre, TRIUMF stores, processes and distributes around the clock massive amounts of data generated by the experiment. Located at CERN, the European organization for nuclear research, the ATLAS experiment played a major role in the most important particle physics breakthrough to date—the discovery of the Higgs boson, a fundamental ingredient to the building blocks that constitute our universe.
• With storage performance a critical requirement especially at petabytes level, TRIUMF sought a powerful storage system with industry-leading density, reliability and efficiency that would significantly speed up data storage and processing. The organization also wanted to increase global collaboration by enabling seamless sending and receiving of large files with other ATLAS sites.
• Using DDN® SFA® 12KXE with embedded dCache, TRIUMF consolidated both storage and data distribution within a converged architecture to deliver unlimited and seamless data access and sharing between nine other Tier-1 and 70 Tier-2 sites while minimizing access latency.
• Thanks to DDN's industry-leading density, running TRIUMF's storage infrastructure now costs significantly less than before; the organization went from 21 4U servers requiring multiple racks to one DDN SFA system with 1.6 PBs running eight dCache virtual nodes in half a rack. Significant savings in data center space, power and cooling costs also have been realized.

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DDN Streamlines Scientific Data Distribution to Increase Global Research Collaboration

• DDN's In-Storage Processing™ feature enabled TRIUMF to embed dCache within the storage controller, consolidating both its storage processing and data distribution requirements in one system, with simple, single pane of glass management.
• DDN enables TRIUMF to handle the highest levels of intensive data processing and simulations in support of the biggest experiment of the century.
• DDN's scalable, high-capacity storage was ideally suited for accommodating TRIUMF's aggressive storage growth, which expanded by at least one order of magnitude at each refresh cycle.
• In addition to proven data resiliency, sophisticated DDN capabilities, including DirectProtect™ and Data-At-Rest Encryption, enabled TRIUMF to meet extremely stringent availability requirements.

Supporting Quotes

Reda Tafirout, research scientist at TRIUMF and director of operations for the ATLAS Tier-1 data centre in Canada

• "We have used DDN for many years as a trusted provider. TRIUMF cannot afford any downtime while the ATLAS experiment is running and collecting data, so providing our storage services with the highest performance and reliability, while being fault tolerant against data corruption is extremely important and critical to our operations."
• "With DDN, we have no problem accommodating close to 5,000 data hungry cores hammering on our storage at the Tier-1 centre. Moreover, there are several hundred clients from all over the world accessing our data around the clock."
• "Running TRIUMF's storage infrastructure costs significantly less than before. We went from 21 4U servers requiring multiple racks to one DDN SFA system with eight virtual dCache nodes in about half a rack; power went from 25 to less than 7 kilowatts in addition to major cost savings on cooling."
• "We made the right decision when we chose DDN to take TRIUMF to the next level of expansion. Having more powerful storage performance with higher density, reliability and performance will help us grow in place while keeping up with new use cases and increased demands for global scientific collaborations."

Supporting Resources

• More on DDN SFA12K Family
• Read TRIUMF case study
• Follow DDN via Blog and Twitter

DataDirect Networks
DDN Storage (DDN) is a leader in data center infrastructure for Big Data and Cloud Storage applications. 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 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, financial services, 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-TERABYTE (837-2298).

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