Spectra Logic Won Bid for National Center for Supercomputing Application

Spectra Logic Corp. won the contract bid to archive computational research data for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

NCSA chose a nine-frame Spectra T-Finity tape library initially configured with 25 LTO-5 drives and 8,000 licensed media slots for its eight petabyte archive. T-Finity was selected due to its features critical to high-performance computing (HPC) storage, including high capacity of data storage, low data center foot print, high availability, flexible and easy scalability and media health monitoring with management options such as Media Lifecycle Management.

"Spectra Logic’s T-Finity bid met every product requirement outlined in the request for proposals (RFP), including a comprehensive data migration plan, at a competitive cost," said Michelle Butler, technical program manager, NCSA. "The configuration of two Spectra Logic libraries, one temporarily dedicated to media migration, allowed NCSA flexibility when moving/writing data out of two Quantum Scalar 10K tape libraries. Spectra’s TeraPacks offered fast media transportation with no down time or performance degradation and a seamless integration into the T-Finity production library."

NCSA chose the T-Finity in part for its long-term investment appeal as NCSA’s research data archives increase by 75 percent each year on average. The T-Finity library enables NCSA to easily add capacity with additional media slots/frames and to increase performance. Disk solutions were not considered due to the size of the archive, and tape’s inherent operating and capital expenditure cost savings. Disk solutions were not considered due to the size of the archive, and tape’s inherent operating and capital expenditure cost savings.

"This T-Finity contract win marks another milestone for Spectra Logic earning the trust and business opportunity of a highly-respected, worldwide HPC site and is a testament to Spectra leading the evolution of tape technology in the storage industry," said Brian Grainger, vice president of worldwide sales, Spectra Logic. "Spectra’s tape libraries provide extremely reliable data archives, and we look forward to teaming with NCSA to ensure its archive requirements are successfully met."