PORTLAND, Oregon, October 29, 2020 — StrongBox Data Solutions (SBDS), the leading provider of autonomous large scale data management and archive solutions, announced today it was awarded a five-year contract to implement a new data management system for DKRZ, to expand the Center’s critical climate science research data services. The project will be driven by SBDS’s flagship StrongLink software, and will replace the existing HPSS HSM with a new system based upon open standard LTFS and S3, providing researchers with seamless access to 150PB of legacy research data. In addition, StrongLink will also automate multi-tier storage workflows, virtualizing flash, disk, and LTFS tape to support at least 120PB per year of new HPC research data flows.

Leveraging StrongLink’s powerful metadata-driven workflow engines, the new system will enable DKRZ to maintain daily production access to all data, even after the HPSS system has been decommissioned. Users will continue to access data as before, with StrongLink presenting a global normalized view of all data across all storage types.

“This new system will enable DKRZ to expand and modernize essential data services to our research community, while also seamlessly transitioning to a new open-standard platform that can grow as we do.” said Prof. Thomas Ludwig, CEO at DKRZ. “This will provide a solid foundation to ensure researchers have on-going access to the critical data needed for climate modeling and improved climate projections.”

StrongLink will be deployed in a scale-out architecture to prioritize 120PB per year in frontside production workflows between existing Tier-0 HPC storage and the new multi-tier system. To do this, StrongLink’s metadata-driven workflow engines will virtualize 1PB of new high-performance Tier-1 cache, and the five legacy Tier-2 tape libraries, automating both day-to-day tiering operations plus the background HPSS-to-LTFS migration of 150PB of existing data. In all, tape IO will be parallelized across 90 tape drives in the five libraries with together more than 75.000 media slots.

“StrongLink was designed to provide customers like DKRZ with a vendor-neutral platform that could seamlessly automate data management and high speed data movement across otherwise incompatible storage types at any scale,” said Floyd Christofferson, CEO of StrongBox Data Solutions. “As DKRZ will increase its supercomputing power, their data needs continue to grow to advance cutting edge climate science research. We are thrilled to assist in this important work.”

The installation, configuration and project management for the new DKRZ data management system will be provided by Cristie Data GmbH, with headquarters in Niedernberg, Germany. Cristie Data will also provide integration services for all of the hardware needed for the project, including servers for StrongLink software, 1PB of Tier-1 storage, and all networking and other components.

About DKRZ

The German Climate Computing Center (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum, DKRZ) is a central national service facility for climate and earth system research. Its high-performance computers, data storage and services form the central research infrastructure for simulation-based climate science in Germany. The data management system is one of the largest in the world.
DKRZ provides its resources (computing time, hard-drive storage and archive capacity, consultancy and visualizations) free of charge. Any scientists conducting research in the field of climate and earth system science in Germany, and requiring HPC resources for their work may apply for resources at DKRZ.

About Cristie Data

With over 50 years of experience Cristie Data has been providing reliable storage, backup and disaster recovery solutions. Since its founding in Stroud, England, in 1969, Cristie has expanded operations globally with more than 300,000 installations worldwide. Cristie has focused on data management, data storage and data security for over 20 years. From storing data to metadata management. This includes the retrieval of files, e-mail archiving, intelligent storage management as well as long-term archiving and HSM.

About StrongBox Data Solutions

StrongBox Data Solutions (SBDS) is a worldwide leader in intelligent data management and archiving, servicing the world’s most demanding data environments, with over 12 years of experience in virtualizing data workflows between tape and disk. SBDS’s flagship StrongLink autonomous data management software is a vendor-neutral solution designed to automate data management across otherwise incompatible storage types, including flash, disk, tape and cloud storage for data environments at any scale. Visit https://strongboxdata.com.

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Source: DKRZ; StrongBox