High bandwidth WAN access to large data is a requirement for delivering effective grid access to remote supercomputing resources. HP StorageWorks Scalable Fileshare (HP SFS) can meet these high-bandwidth needs. In the StorCloud Bandwidth Challenge at SC05 in Seattle, Washington HP showcased an HP SFS storage appliance with 64 terabytes of capacity and 40 gigabits-per-second of bandwidth. HP SFS drove this bandwidth over a 200 mile Cisco-powered WAN connection to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, WA.
This impressive WAN bandwidth was far from the over 200 Gb/s of HP SFS scalability possible using InfiniBand over shorter distances. Even so, 40 Gb/s over 200 miles is an impressive feat. The largest standard HP SFS configurations in 2005 are rated at 35 GB/s (280 Gb/s), with more available by request.
The WAN connecting StorCloud to PNNL was four 10 GbE Ethernet links provided by Cisco. PNNL ran the applications for the StorCloud bandwidth challenge.
HP SFS server in the StorCloud booth:
- 64 terabytes capacity
- 4 GB/s bandwidth
- 32 data servers running the Lustre™ protocol
- 32 SFS20 disk arrays with 2 TB usable each
WAN link: Two Cisco 6509 switches provided by Cisco
- 4 links of 10 Gb/s each
- Over 200 miles between Seattle and Richland, WA
- 64 GbE links in StorCloud and 128 GbE links in Richland
- Compute cluster: 128 HP Integrity rx2600 servers
- At PNNL in Richland, WA
HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share (HP SFS) is a powerful file server that gives users of Linux clusters scalable storage that is easy to use and easy to administer. The HP StorageWorks SFS20 disk arrays, consisting of a large number of low-cost, off-the-shelf RAID arrays, deliver exceptional price/performance. HP SFS shares bandwidth by distributing files in parallel across Linux clusters of industry-standard server and storage components.
Lustre is a trademark of Cluster File Systems, Inc. in the United States.
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