ACCELERATE: ACADEMIC RESEARCH National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Builds Storage Environments with DDN SFA10K™ & SFA12K™ to House Vital Research Data for Advanced Scientifi c Discovery
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- DDN SFA10K
- DDN SFA12K
Tech Stack
- Storage Fusion Architecture
- InfiniBand storage appliances
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, provides world-class computing, data, networking, and visualization resources and services to meet science needs. Established in 1986 as one of the original sites of the National Science Foundation’s Supercomputer Centers Program, NCSA is supported by the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, the National Science Foundation and other federal agency grants. NCSA plays a major role in helping facilitate high-performance computing resource sharing as it’s essential to research in many disciplines across the Illinois campus, including astronomy, physics, chemistry, engineering and more.
The Challenge
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) was facing dwindling mid-range research funding which drove the need for condo-style campus clusters across a single shared environment. This was extremely complex as it involved accommodating multiple generations of hardware, interconnected technology and storage in one unified system. Ensuring equal access to all types and any number of nodes was complicated, including determining how to handle queuing and configurations. The center sought a blend of IOPS, bandwidth, performance and efficient capacity management in an environment including multiple generations of hardware resources.
The Solution
NCSA deployed DDN’s high-performance storage solutions, including its most advanced platform, featuring its Storage Fusion Architecture® engine to support the Illinois Campus Cluster Program. DDN’s SFA10K and SFA12K InfiniBand storage appliances with nearly 1PB of storage capacity were implemented to support the single storage pool for all nodes in the campus cluster. This solution was chosen as it could address the unique technical and business challenges associated with implementing a single computing and storage environment. It provided the flexibility to work with multiple generations of hardware and accommodate a wide range of configuration requirements.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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