The Australian National University Opts for SGI, Spectra Logic, QLogic and FalconStor

Silicon Graphics
International Corporation announced that The Australian National University (ANU) has completed the
installation of an SGI high performance private data cloud storage solution
tailored for the needs of its research and corporate users, and for its
national computing role in National Computational Infrastructure – the
Australian national peak computing partnership which includes CSIRO, Bureau of
Meteorology and Geoscience Australia.

This project has been driven by the growth in storage demand across
the organisation and a desire to implement a system that would deliver improved
efficiency and services, better value for money, and cater for the future. The
University’s data has been doubling every 14-18 months and at the same time the
number of disparate data silos had been increasing across the organisation as
groups attempted locally to solve their challenges. The building of the new
data cloud provides an single approach to address all of the
storage requirements of the University.

ANU realised that the opportunity existed through economies of scale
to improve the manner in which they managed their growing
data volumes. The Division of Information (DOI) and the National Computational
Infrastructure (NCI) groups aligned the requirements for storage infrastructure
to support their initiatives to present a single architecture for performance,
functionality and growth. As a result, the new infrastructure is spread across
two locations to provide increased resiliency on the ANU campus in Acton,
Australian Capital Territory.

"Our data requirements
are continually growing and we needed a reliable robust solution to meet this
challenge," said Allan Williams, Director of Information Technology
Services at ANU. "Developing and
deploying an internal data storage cloud solution gives us a significant
expansion capability with delivery flexibility to meet our academic and core
administrative needs. The SGI solution underpins a core element in developing
an effective data management strategy for the University."

"Our data storage systems
are an important infrastructure for our high performance modelling and
data-intensive research," said Dr. Ben Evans, who oversees data
activities for NCI. "We required a
flexible and reliable platform to manage data in diverse application areas,
such as astronomy, climate, environment, geophysics and the social sciences.
With this installation, and ongoing collaboration with SGI, we aim to achieve
new level of data service performance and resiliency that integrates with our
HPC and cloud services."

To scale NCI data archive volumes, the cloud uses the SGI Data
Migration Facility (DMF) tiered storage and Spectra Logic tape libraries, with
capacity of up to 14PB of nearline storage and capacity to grow as
needs dictate. FalconStor virtualisation servers enhance online stores with
dynamic SSD caches while accelerating Virtual Machine backups use TimeMark and
HyperTrac technologies.

The installation includes over 11PB of SGI InfiniteStorage RAID technology,
NAS appliances and 8Gbps FC switching to unify the various components into a
cloud delivering storage services.

The SGI Professional Services organisation took responsibility for
the overall project and worked with its partners Independent Data
Solutions-Group, Spectra Logic and QLogic to implement the solution. SGI
consultants worked with ANU to optimise the data cloud. This dialogue
has resulted in a system that meets the needs of corporate requirements
and academic staff of the university, in addition to the support for
requirements of NCI stakeholders.

"We are delighted that
ANU has entrusted SGI to deploy its DataCloud Solution," said Nick
Gorga, SGI general manager, Australia and New Zealand. "Data is the lifeblood of any organisation.
The ability to manage it efficiently and cost effectively empowers an
organisation to make great decisions and discoveries. We are confident ANU will
reap significant benefits over the coming years."