JSC Strengthens Infrastructure for Data Services

In the first half of 2018, the storage infrastructure at JSC underwent a major overhaul and extension in order to address the ever increasing demand for capacity by its supercomputer users.

Since early 2018, a new IBM TS4500 tape library has augmented the two existing libraries for the storage of archive and backup data. The library is equipped with Linear Tape Open (LTO) media and kicks off the transition of JSC's entire tape infrastructure to this storage technology over the coming years. The new library provides a capacity of approximately 170 PB and 6 GB/s bandwidth.

In spring, the fifth generation of the central Jülich Storage Cluster JUST was installed. The system uses the IBM Spectrum Scale and GPFS Native RAID software stack to provide the same functionality and reliability as its predecessor and thus allows an online transition from old to new hardware. Consisting of 22 Lenovo DSS-G storage building blocks with 7,516 disks, JUST now provides a raw capacity of up to 75 PB and up to 500 GB/s bandwidth. Along with the upgrade, a new Ethernet fabric was introduced that scales up to the required multi-terabit/s performance.

The third addition to the storage landscape at JSC is a low-bandwidth, capacity-oriented, multi-purpose storage tier integrated in JUST. The capacity of this new tier, initially 40 PB raw, will be incrementally extended over the next few years. It will enable users to keep large data sets readily accessible for extended periods, store very large raw research data sets that require HPC processing and will also offer new sharing capabilities. To this end, the storage system will be combined with a cloud infrastructure for hosting community data services. JSC will introduce several new service offerings around this storage tier in the course of this autumn and next year.

Contact: Stephan Graf, st.graf@fz-juelich.de

from JSC News No. 259, 8 August 2018