Nexenta,
the global leader in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage
(OpenSDS), today announced Northern
Arizona University (NAU) has deployed NexentaStor
to handle the extensive datasets involved in research conducted at the
university.
NAU faculty and graduate students are renowned for their research in
astronomy, bioinformatics, computational chemistry, cropland mapping,
human microbiome analysis and microbial genomics—all generating big data
items such as genome maps, Landsat images and complex chemistry data
sets. As these data sets grew over the years, they exceeded the capacity
and compute power of NAU’s individual research labs, so the High-Performance
Computing (HPC) team led by Research Administrator, Christopher
Coffey, centralized compute and storage to better assist researchers
with their work.
Coffey said he reviewed a variety of storage options, including
SAN-based RAID systems, and roll-your-own ZFS solutions. His goal was to
find one complementary to the university’s existing HPC system, which
consists of Dell servers and Mellanox’s InfiniBand/Virtual Protocol
Interconnect (VPI) switches with Connect X3 cards.
“No other option we looked at surpassed Nexenta’s features, flexibility
and ZFS support,” said Coffey. “Since implementation of the Nexentastor
appliance, it’s been hands off, requiring minimal maintenance, which is
a big deal for us.”
NexentaStor delivers archival/intermediate storage with compression, and
achieves petabyte-scale active archives. Its snapshots capability
enables the retrieval of original or lost files locally via Network File
System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB) object services from around
the campus. In addition, the system removes the need for prep steps
prior to moving data into place for analysis.
Coffey says he and his team value the compression achievable from
Nexenta’s solution because they’re saving money by reducing the
footprint of the datasets. The virtual nature of the SDS extends the
purchased physical storage beyond what is ordinarily possible, according
to Coffey.
“Large research universities epitomize today’s diverse, complex and
performance-intensive organizations that crave IT systems with storage
built to flexibly respond to any scenario, including unforeseen
changes,” said Tarkan Maner, Chairman and CEO of Nexenta Systems. “NAU’s
HPC team chose Nexenta because our approach to SDS meets their needs
today and exceeds their expectations going forward.”
Please refer to the NAU
HPC Case Study for more implementation details.