Two high performance Lustre-based storage appliances are in full production at Cornell’s Ithaca, New York campus. High availability is essential, as faculty and graduate student researchers access the systems around the clock. One group of researchers is performing mechanical engineering simulations to model turbulent reacting multiphase flows, with a goal to improve the design of aircraft engine fuel injectors. A second group is doing environmental simulations that analyze complex water management data that may help create more sustainable water management systems in light of expanding populations and climate change.

While assessing possible storage platforms, CAC leaders knew they did not have staff resources to dedicate to managing and optimizing a Lustre-based HPC storage system. Other purchase criteria included the ability to easily monitor the system (with phone-home support) for performance degradation or component failures. The first storage appliance has been in production since 2012 and based on its success, a second system was purchased in 2013.

“We were pleasantly surprised that we could procure a shrink-wrapped solution that exceeded the researchers’ performance expectations and be within budget,” noted Resa Alvord, CAC assistant director, systems. “With same day installation and excellent Terascala after sales support, recommending a second HSS purchase was an easy decision.”

“Repeat customers are a demonstrable testament to the return on investment received,” stated Alan Swahn, Terascala’s vice president of marketing. “As word spreads on the challenges of roll your own Lustre, I expect the turnkey appliance model to become a requirement in customer RFPs.”

About Terascala 

Terascala—the High Performance Computing (HPC) storage management company—has pioneered software that lowers total cost of ownership by managing and optimizing data, performance, and reliability. Savings are quickly realized through minimizing downtime, moving data very fast between scratch and inexpensive backup storage, and optimizing workload throughput. The company’s TeraOS software provides system-level high availability to reduce costly degraded performance and downtime. It integrates workload, network, storage, and file system monitoring, analysis, pre-emptive failure alerts, and fast failover. Terascala’s real-time analysis and phone-home support keeps these highly complex systems up and running at peak performance. Support costs are minimized with no HPC or parallel file system expertise required.

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Source: Terascala