Columbus, OH and Armonk, NY -- Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) announced today that it has selected IBM storage hardware and software to manage an immense repository of research data. Crucial data such as bioinformatics, which is generated through shared research applications provided by OSC, will reach thousands of researchers across the state of Ohio as a result of the agreement.
IBM will supply a virtualized and autonomic storage infrastructure to power OSC’s research applications, increasing OSC’s data storage capacity five-fold over its previous system and resulting in over 600 terabytes – or six trillion bytes – of physical storage capacity. OSC has already begun phasing in IBM TotalStorage® FAStT storage servers, TotalStorage SAN File System and TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller.
The SAN File System and SAN Volume Controller are part of the IBM TotalStorage Virtualization Software Family which provides one of the industry’s broadest set of virtualization solutions, designed to help lower storage infrastructure related costs and reduce application downtime. OSC anticipates that these solutions will result in a significant performance boost and substantial reliability improvements over its previous systems.
OSC will provide Ohio researchers with applications generating large stores of bioinformatics data, collider experimental data, Byrd Polar data, seismic data and radiological/microscopy data. SAN File System will help OSC to share that data with Ohio researchers and help OSC manage the data easily and cost-effectively across a wide array of IBM storage hardware, including FAStT 900 storage servers and FAStT 600 storage servers with turbo option.
“The large capacity storage will facilitate the massive data stores created by computing activities of researchers across Ohio,” said Paul Buerger, OSC Leader of Systems and Operations. “The capacity and performance of this new storage environment will allow researchers to attack problems that may have been difficult or impossible to address previously.”
“The storage management system not only provides increased capacity for permanent and temporary storage, but it also provides large holding areas for staging data,” said Leslie Southern, OSC High Performance Computing Director. “This intermediate archival area allows researchers to quickly and easily access their data from any location.”
“OSC’s use of SAN File System will reduce storage and data management costs while enabling OSC and Ohio’s research community to tap new levels of data accessibility and control,” said Brian Truskowski, general manager of storage software at IBM. “IBM’s comprehensive storage solution will provide Ohio Supercomputer Center with a highly dynamic and autonomic shared file system that reinvents the way OSC’s information is filed, managed, shared and accessed by Ohio’s research community.”
Based on the Storage Tank technology developed by IBM Research, the IBM TotalStorage SAN File System is designed to provide a single, centralized point of control to manage files and databases, which can help simplify administration and result in lower total costs. Built with autonomic and Grid technologies from IBM Research, the SAN File System has an architecture that can eventually support thousands of computers, petabytes of data, and billions of files.
About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com.
About OSC
OSC is Ohio's high performance computing and networking center. The Center provides scientific computing, networking, educational outreach, and information technology resources to state and national high performance computing and networking groups. OSC empowers its academic, industrial, and government partners to make Ohio the education and technology state of the future. For more information, go to www.osc.edu.
