Auspex file server for Arlington compute farmSanta Clara 20 June 2001 The University of Texas at Arlington has purchased and installed an Auspex NetServer to store and serve files for 28 Compaq nodes in a new supercomputing farm utilized by the college's research community.
The university decided to deploy a NAS system because the centralized
storage and file serving capabilities would eliminate the need to manage
direct-attached storage for each of the 28 dual and quad processing systems in
its new supercomputing environment. Officials selected Auspex's NAS system
over competitive offerings because Auspex provided important performance, high
availability and fault tolerance advantages for file systems that sometimes
reach several gigabytes because of the massive data sets involved.
One of the deciding factors was Auspex's support for multiple RAID formats
(RAID 0, 1, and 5), which supplies the rapid data transaction and transfer
rate, efficient parity scheme and level of fault tolerance necessary to handle
the exceptionally large files of the university's research operation. The
option to mix multiple RAID configurations, the system's high-performance file
serving, and the ability to scale from the university's initial 500 GB
installation to multiple terabytes on the same server were also key
considerations.
U.T. Arlington's new 66-CPU supercomputing farm replaces a Silicon
Graphics supercomputer, providing a heterogeneous platform that is expected to
save money by allowing the university to upgrade components rather than
purchasing a new supercomputer every few years. The system facilitates
research projects in various disciplines, including computational chemistry,
molecular modeling, solid state physics and computational fluid dynamics.
"We believe that our new supercomputing platform will be a model for other
universities because of the ability to upgrade component by component as more
powerful technology becomes available," said Dr. Dennis Marynick, Jenkins
Garrett Professor of Chemistry and Chair of U.T. Arlington's High Performance
Computing Committee. "In moving away from a self-contained supercomputer to a
farm with multiple processing boxes, a central file server is vital for ease
of maintenance, and Auspex offers clear advantages for the large files
inherent in this kind of operation."
Auspex's NetServer family of products are used by industries and
enterprises to optimize storage management infrastructures and provide fast,
reliable access to multi-terabytes of consolidated Unix and Windows data.
Designed for customers with traditional business applications as well as
corporate Internet sites, including those with dynamic business-to-business
e-commerce functions, Auspex filers include a full suite of data management
tools that ensure high availability, high-speed backup and replication, and
maximum uptime. They also provide fast and seamless file sharing between Unix
and Windows clients, with a unique restricted file permission that prevents
unauthorized users from accessing protected Unix or Windows files across
platforms.
Ad Emmen |
 |