ACCELERATE: ACADEMIC RESEARCH - Purdue University Delivers 900% Faster Access to Data, Delivering Accelerated Time to Results for 1,000 Researchers and 300 Projects with Powerful Storage and Advanced Caching Technology from DDN
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- DDN’s SFA12KX® storage platform
- DDN EXAScaler® parallel fi le system appliance
- DDN’s SFX technology
Tech Stack
- High-performance storage
- Advanced caching technology
- Parallel file system
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Discrete Manufacturing
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Purdue University is a global leader in research, discovery, and innovation. At the college’s West Lafayette, Ind., campus, more than 400 research laboratories and 140 university-approved research centers and institutes form a broad interdisciplinary research hub. Ranked No. 22 in the Best College Reviews of the top US research universities, Purdue is home to Discovery Park, a state-of-the-art facility with one-of-a-kind research and educational opportunities to catalyze and facilitate research breakthroughs for global impact. To fuel its multi-disciplinary research efforts, Purdue University has developed one of the nation’s largest campus cyberinfrastructures for research. Three of the university’s high-performance computing (HPC) systems are currently listed in the internationally known Top500® list, including the nation’s largest academic distributed computing grid and largest collection of science and medical online hubs. To ensure the highest levels of support for its various research initiatives, Purdue also has deployed a robust data repository, called the Data Depot.
The Challenge
Purdue University, a global leader in research, discovery, and innovation, faced the challenge of meeting the needs of up to 1,000 researchers working on several hundred projects. This drove the decision to deploy one large, centralized data repository powered by high-performance storage. The big data variety, velocity, and volume created the need for highly versatile, scalable storage. Diverse workloads required highly flexible storage to accommodate large parallel I/O jobs and many small, random read requests. The university initially looked at the needs of several top research areas, including computational nanotechnologies, aeronautical and astronomical engineering, mechanical engineering, genomics, structural biology, as well as several large projects in the life sciences disciplines. The challenge of managing varied research needs is accommodating both very large parallel I/O jobs and millions of small, random read requests without imposing performance penalties on anyone.
The Solution
Purdue University implemented a centralized, high-performance storage solution for its Data Depot service, driven by DDN’s SFA12KX® storage platform with SFX. Additional sites use DDN EXAScaler® parallel file system appliance with SFX® cache acceleration. The university implemented a pair of DDN SFA 12KX high-performance storage systems with a total of 6.4PBs of raw storage capacity to provide block storage for the university’s GPFS parallel file system. Redundant storage arrays were installed in multiple campus data centers for maximum availability. Additionally, the university took advantage of DDN’s award-winning Storage Fusion Xcelerator (SFX) technology, which employs advanced caching technology to deliver unprecedented performance improvements. SFX uses storage acceleration tools that combine spinning and solid-state disk storage media with application-aware technology that enables storage systems to load data into system cache to accelerate both block and file-based data access.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
IoT platform Enables Safety Solutions for U.S. School Districts
Designed to alert drivers when schoolchildren are present, especially in low-visibility conditions, school-zone flasher signals are typically updated manually at each school. The switching is based on the school calendar and manually changed when an unexpected early dismissal occurs, as in the case of a weather-event altering the normal schedule. The process to reprogram the flashers requires a significant effort by school district personnel to implement due to the large number of warning flashers installed across an entire school district.
Case Study
Revolutionizing Medical Training in India: GSL Smart Lab and the LAP Mentor
The GSL SMART Lab, a collective effort of the GSL College of Medicine and the GSL College of Nursing and Health Science, was facing a challenge in providing superior training to healthcare professionals. As clinical medicine was becoming more focused on patient safety and quality of care, the need for medical simulation to bridge the educational gap between the classroom and the clinical environment was becoming increasingly apparent. Dr. Sandeep Ganni, the director of the GSL SMART Lab, envisioned a world-class surgical and medical training center where physicians and healthcare professionals could learn skills through simulation training. He was looking for different simulators for different specialties to provide both basic and advanced simulation training. For laparoscopic surgery, he was interested in a high fidelity simulator that could provide basic surgical and suturing skills training for international accreditation as well as specific hands-on training in complex laparoscopic procedures for practicing physicians in India.
Case Study
Implementing Robotic Surgery Training Simulator for Enhanced Surgical Proficiency
Fundacio Puigvert, a leading European medical center specializing in Urology, Nephrology, and Andrology, faced a significant challenge in training its surgical residents. The institution recognized the need for a more standardized and comprehensive training curriculum, particularly in the area of robotic surgery. The challenge was underscored by two independent studies showing that less than 5% of residents in Italian and German residency programs could perform major or complex procedures by the end of their residency. The institution sought to establish a virtual reality simulation lab that would include endourological, laparoscopic, and robotic platforms. However, they needed a simulator that could replicate both the hardware and software of the robotic Da Vinci console used in the operating room, without being connected to the actual physical console. They also required a system that could provide both basic and advanced simulation training, and a metrics system to assess the proficiency of the trainees before they performed surgical procedures in the operating theater.
Case Study
Edinburgh Napier University streamlines long-distance learning with Cisco WebEX
• Geographically dispersed campus made in-person meetings costly and inconvenient.• Distance-learning programs in Malaysia, India, and China required dependable, user-friendly online tools to maximize interaction in collaborative workspaces.• Virtual learning environment required a separate sign-in process, resulting in a significant administrative burden for IT staff and limited adoption of collaboration technology.
Case Study
8x increased productivity with VKS
Before VKS, a teacher would spend a lot of time showing a group of 22 students how to build a set of stairs within a semester of 120 hours. Along with not leaving the teacher much time to provide one-on-one support for each student to properly learn carpentry, it also left a considerable amount of room for error. Key information would be misinterpreted or lost as the class was taught in the typical show-and-tell way.
Case Study
Scalable IoT Empowering GreenFlex's Sustainable Growth
GreenFlex, a company that supports sustainable development, decarbonization, and energy efficiency, faced several challenges in its quest to expand its business. The company needed to deploy a robust and sustainable IoT technology to support its growth. It was crucial for them to monitor and control devices at customer sites in a safe and reliable manner. They also needed to integrate devices across a range of communication protocols and gather and act on data to meet efficiency targets. GreenFlex had previously built IoT capabilities into its digital platform, GreenFlexIQ, to monitor and manage customer sites remotely. However, they soon realized that they needed a new platform to support their ambitions. They needed a platform that could scale to connect more devices for production management and make it easier for the operations team to manage devices in the field.
