HPCwire: Florida HPC Center Selects RAID Inc. Storage

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May 13, 2008

Florida HPC Center Selects RAID Inc. Storage

METHUEN, Mass, May 13 -- RAID Inc., a customer-centric storage solutions provider specializing in custom manufacturing of leading edge storage solutions, today announced that the University of Florida's High-Performance Computing (HPC) Center has chosen RAID Inc. for a large implementation of over 100 TB of performance-intensive 4Gb Fibre to SATA-2 storage. The storage solution, which was designed in a clustered architecture, is networked in such a way to allow shared access not only between multiple research facilities across campus, but by scientific groups at various educational and government research facilities that span the state of Florida and the entire country.

The University's HPC Center is linked to five satellite facilities on campus via its 20 Gb/s Ethernet Campus Research Network (CRN). Their distributed storage solution consists of six RAID Inc. Falcon III (24-bay, 4Gb FC to SATA-2) subsystems. This storage is made available to users as a cluster file system (Lustre) hosted by three servers. Two of the servers are configured with three dual-port Fibre Channel (4 Gb/s) HBAs, an InfiniBand (4X SDR) HCA, and a 10 Gb/s Ethernet adapter. The Fibre Channel HCAs provide access to the storage while the InfiniBand and Ethernet adapters distribute the file system to the HPC cluster (locally) and to the satellite facilities over the CRN. The resulting architecture has sustained throughput of up to 2 Gb/s (read and write) from both local and remote clients.

"This novel approach to sharing scientific data will facilitate analysis and increase the likelihood of important discoveries. It raises the bar for storage innovation in the HPC arena," stated Bob Picardi, chief operating officer at RAID, Incorporated. "We are thrilled that RAID's Falcon III, 24-bay product was integral to the success of this exciting storage solution."

Research groups at other universities within the state will also be able to take advantage of this RAID Inc. storage solution. The University is one of ten academic institutions across the state to be a member of the Florida LambdaRail (http://www.flrnet.org/), Florida's research and education network. The FLR is complementary to the National LambdaRail (http://www.nlr.net/) initiative, a national high-speed research network for research universities and technology companies. The FLR provides opportunities for faculty, researchers, and students within the state of Florida to collaborate with colleagues around the world on leading edge research projects. The FLR also supports the State of Florida's economic development and high-tech aspirations.

"The High-Performance Computing Center at the University of Florida seeks best of breed providers that can push the technology envelope in support of our research projects, " said Charlie Taylor, associate director of the University of Florida's HPC Center. "RAID Inc. was the ideal partner for our challenging storage needs, and their Falcon III product was a key component in the success of this project."

Thus far, the storage has been distributed between the University of Florida in Gainesville and Florida International University (FIU) located in Miami. This type of work between research groups at geographically distant universities is a major step towards a large collaborative effort that has been in the planning phase for several years now and is beginning to finally take shape. Among other projects, researchers at University of Florida and FIU are working towards finding evidence of a hypothetical particle that has been theorized by physicists, but as of yet never observed. Researchers at these universities will also be working remotely with a new particle accelerator currently under construction at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. As their work begins to move forward, it is likely that more research labs across the state and the country will also have the ability to access the same storage pool.

About RAID Incorporated

Headquartered in Methuen, Mass., RAID Incorporated is a managed storage service provider (MSSP) and designs customized storage systems and solutions. RAID Incorporated's flagship service StorageWatch is the industry's only real-time monitoring and managed storage service which reduces customers total cost of ownership by reducing operational costs associated with maintaining and administering storage systems while increasing data availability. Since 1994, RAID has been devoted to researching and developing leading edge technologies while providing twenty-four hour support services to become one of the industry leaders. RAID specializes in solving compute, application, and disaster recovery needs with a unique platform combining hardware, software, and services. www.raidinc.com.

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Source: RAID Inc.

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