NCI taps NetApp for supercomputing storage

Australian peak research computing facility National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) has contracted NetApp to provide high-performance storage for its facility.

NetApp teamed up with Fujitsu to install 11 petabytes worth of all-flash storage arrays for the supercomputing facility. NCI now has a total raw storage capacity of 44 petabytes.

The new NetApp will form part of NCI’s new high-performance global parallel file systems, which will be capable of streaming data from the supercomputer and the cloud at up to 100 GB per second.

“As a result of constant growth in data holdings and scientific research projects that often generate and analyse petabytes of new data in very short time frames, we needed to design a new pod-based storage architecture that can scale seamlessly in predetermined blocks of capacity and throughput,” NCI Director Professor Lindsay Botten said.

“This new infrastructure enables NCI to deliver high-speed, low latency access to customer data, enhanced virtualisation services and more secure operations.”

NCI is home to the Southern Hemisphere’s fastest supercomputer and Australia’s highest-performance research cloud. It is funded by the Australian Government’s national research infrastructure strategy (NCRIS).

NetApp is a computer storage and data management company based in California. The company has more than 150 offices worldwide, including in Australia.

Image courtesy of ChrisDag under CC