European University and Research Institute Deployed Nexenta OpenSDS

Nexenta, Inc. announced that the, Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Materials Simulation (ICAMS), a research institute at Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB), supports its research with NexentaStor.

Located in the heart of Europe, Ruhr-University Bochum has over 5,600 employees, 41,000 students from over 130 countries, and focuses on the development of scientific institutions like ICAMS.

Founded in 2008, ICAMS at RUB focuses on the development and application of a new generation of simulation tools for multi-scale materials modelling with the aim of reducing development cost and time for new materials. The center’s research on new materials via this interdisciplinary approach makes ICAMS unique. Within the approach taken by ICAMS, the different length scales that are relevant for materials – from the atomic structure to macroscopic properties of materials – are bridged by an interdisciplinary team of world-renowned scientists from engineering, materials science, chemistry, physics and mathematics.

To support its research resulting from their HPC system, the institution needed IT services via a software-defined data center approach. An existing RAID legacy system that saved the results from the HPC calculations, struggled to cope with the workload as more students accessed the data. The institution needed a performance, high capacity, flexible, open, and cost-effective solution to replace it. It also required a partner that could guarantee support.

ICAMS saw Nexenta as the solution that could meet its needs. To test the benefits of SDS, the NexentaStor Community Edition was installed into an existing system. After a positive experience, the team decided to install NexentaStor Enterprise Edition to replace the existing standard RAID system.

As a public entity, the university is looking for ways to save money but it still needed a reliable system that could handle the workload. Opting for a SDS approach, which avoids vendor lock-in, the institution can choose from any standard hardware provider. With the support from long standing HPC storage partner MEGWARE Computer Vertrieb und Service GmbH, the institution implemented NexentaStor on standard Supermicro hardware. The system was easy to deploy and ready to use within a day. Offering data reduction and snapshots solved the institutions’ IT needs while staying on a budget.

Mr. Caesar, IT administrator, ICAMS said: “We like that with Nexenta we were able to calculate the total cost for the entire lifespan of the system right from day one with the additional performance and capacity management capabilities. With other vendors it is extremely difficult to plan budgets after the initial three years due to hidden costs. Our experience was that cost for support quickly gets out of hand with legacy vendors. Since we are in the public sector we cannot plan for expensive services three years ahead. We like openness and flexibility in deploying Nexenta with no vendor lock-in.“

Mark Jordan, VP and GM, EMEA, Nexenta, commented: “ICAMS needed a high performance solution and a high level of partner support and we were pleased to be able to meet these demands. The major factor for ICAMS was the ability to avoid vendor lock-in and with NexentaStor we achieved this.“

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