Panasas and Western Digital Collaborating to Speed Research Discovery

Panasas, Inc. collaborates with Western Digital Corporation, to use iRODS (Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System) rules-based open source software to propel data discovery in life science research.

The joint solution combines Panasas ActiveStor storage, the HGST Active Archive System and iRODS data management software to create a managed multi-tier storage infrastructure that accelerates and optimizes data access, simulations and data analysis for research organizations working to improve medical discoveries through bioinformatics. Details on the collaboration can be found in the HGST Speed Research Discovery use case document.

Life Sciences / HPC Storage and Data Managment Architecture

The rate of progress in life sciences research is accelerating exponentially, leading to important advances that generate – and rely upon – an ever-expanding mountain of valuable data. Key to accelerating life science application performance is implementing a data infrastructure that eliminates computing and storage bottlenecks, enables better collaboration and preserves simplicity so researchers can focus their efforts on discovery. The joint Panasas-HGST solution consists of the following components:

Panasas ActiveStor Performance Scale-out NAS

DirectFlow parallel access protocol for life sciences compute grid processing
Scales from terabytes to more than 45PB in a single namespace and 360GB/s or 2.6 milion IO/s
Low opex with HA via the sixth generation PanFS file system

HGST Active Archive System

Simple to Deploy: Power and network connections are all you need
Extreme Scale: Increase capacity and performance in line with data growth
Highest Resiliency: up to 15 nines data durability
Enterprise Security: End-to-end encryption security for in-flight and data at-rest protection
Excellent TCO: Low acquisition cost, power/TB, high capacity and density

iRODS

Workflow automation with rules engine
Easy data discovery with metadata catalog
Rules-based storage tiering between Panasas and HGST for efficient data placement

“Our solutions ultimately make data readily available for users, applications and analytics, helping to facilitate faster results and better decisions,” said Gary Lyng, senior director of marketing, data center systems, Western Digital. “We are excited to be working with Panasas as the volume, velocity, variety and value of data generated by modern lab equipment along with varying application and workflow requirements make implementing the right solution all the more challenging – and we have the right solution.“

“We are excited to collaborate with Western Digital to deliver a storage solution that will help the world’s top researchers accelerate their discoveries,” said David Sallak, VP, products and solutions, Panasas. “The data-intensive computing applications in life sciences require high performance with efficient, secure and cost-effective data management and together we are ready to meet those needs.“