OIL & GAS
Writer
BYU's Fulton Supercomputing Lab expands capabilities with BlueArc storage
BlueArc today announced that Brigham Young University's Fulton Supercomputing Lab has implemented a pair of BlueArc Titan storage systems to address their increasing demand for fast, reliable access to terabytes of data for diverse university research projects. These project demands range from modeling aspects of the influenza A virus to simulating the radiation from neutron star collisions, modeling languages and simulating particle physics. In addition to world-record performance, BlueArc's Titan storage system offers BYU's supercomputing facility high reliability for the system's massive workload of simultaneous file- and data-intensive processing tasks. 
BYU's Ira and Mary Lou Fulton Supercomputing Laboratory is among the 150 largest such facilities in the world. At the heart of the lab is marylou4, a Linux cluster comprising 630 nodes and 2,500 processor cores available for faculty and students who need more compute power than their desktops can provide. The supercomputing facility presently supports more than 200 researchers as well as users in the university's award-winning animation department. Operations Director Tom Raisor chose the BlueArc solution after canvassing other university supercomputing lab directors, evaluating a wide variety of network storage vendors and consulting with services provider VarData, a BlueArc value-added reseller.
"BYU offers computing capacity to all students and faculty who need it, and BlueArc Titan technology met our primary criteria of speed and reliability for tasks using massive files as well as the more difficult challenge of handling millions of tiny files," said Raisor. "VarData recognized that BlueArc was a good fit for our needs and went the extra mile to ensure that none of our questions or concerns went unanswered. The product we received was the product we expected. Just as important, the ringing endorsement for BlueArc from other supercomputing facility managers validated our decision."
Fulton Supercomputing Laboratory specifications for the storage solution included throughput of 3 gigabytes per second and at least 60,000 IOPS. BlueArc's Titan storage systems more than met those requirements, with significant available headroom for future demands. The BlueArc solution also allowed Raisor to integrate existing Hitachi storage technology and make the most of existing infrastructure.
A lean IT staff comprising two full-time and three part-time employees supports the Fulton Supercomputing Laboratory. Researchers' productivity benefits from the lab staff's ability to work productively. BlueArc's support for the Network File System (NFS) protocol gave Mr. Raisor added assurance that his team would be able to spend time on innovative solutions to users' needs, rather than troubleshooting or fixing compatibility issues that arose frequently with other offerings that would introduce non-standard clients and configurations.
Within a few weeks of the BlueArc Titan deployment, users noticed an improvement in system performance and reliability, and a subsequent surge in demand has created a two-day wait for new projects to launch in the lab's job queue. Therefore, Mr. Raisor anticipates that BYU will upgrade its core processor count by 50 percent in the next three to four months, and expects the BlueArc system to scale easily with that growth.
BYU's Ira and Mary Lou Fulton Supercomputing Laboratory is among the 150 largest such facilities in the world. At the heart of the lab is marylou4, a Linux cluster comprising 630 nodes and 2,500 processor cores available for faculty and students who need more compute power than their desktops can provide. The supercomputing facility presently supports more than 200 researchers as well as users in the university's award-winning animation department. Operations Director Tom Raisor chose the BlueArc solution after canvassing other university supercomputing lab directors, evaluating a wide variety of network storage vendors and consulting with services provider VarData, a BlueArc value-added reseller.
"BYU offers computing capacity to all students and faculty who need it, and BlueArc Titan technology met our primary criteria of speed and reliability for tasks using massive files as well as the more difficult challenge of handling millions of tiny files," said Raisor. "VarData recognized that BlueArc was a good fit for our needs and went the extra mile to ensure that none of our questions or concerns went unanswered. The product we received was the product we expected. Just as important, the ringing endorsement for BlueArc from other supercomputing facility managers validated our decision."
Fulton Supercomputing Laboratory specifications for the storage solution included throughput of 3 gigabytes per second and at least 60,000 IOPS. BlueArc's Titan storage systems more than met those requirements, with significant available headroom for future demands. The BlueArc solution also allowed Raisor to integrate existing Hitachi storage technology and make the most of existing infrastructure.
A lean IT staff comprising two full-time and three part-time employees supports the Fulton Supercomputing Laboratory. Researchers' productivity benefits from the lab staff's ability to work productively. BlueArc's support for the Network File System (NFS) protocol gave Mr. Raisor added assurance that his team would be able to spend time on innovative solutions to users' needs, rather than troubleshooting or fixing compatibility issues that arose frequently with other offerings that would introduce non-standard clients and configurations.
Within a few weeks of the BlueArc Titan deployment, users noticed an improvement in system performance and reliability, and a subsequent surge in demand has created a two-day wait for new projects to launch in the lab's job queue. Therefore, Mr. Raisor anticipates that BYU will upgrade its core processor count by 50 percent in the next three to four months, and expects the BlueArc system to scale easily with that growth. 