Using AIC Servers, Zettar Transferred 1PB in 29 Hours With Encryption

AIC, Inc. announces a recent world-record accomplishment: 1PB in 29 hours encrypted data transfer, with data integrity checksum unconditionally enabled, over a distance of 5,000 miles.

SB122A-PH

The average transfer rate is 75Gb/s, or 94% utilization of the available bandwidth of 80Gb/s.The company’s SB122A-PH, 1U 10-bay NVMe storage server provides this storage service.

This strenuous and production-level trial is part of the preparation for the ambitious data transfer requirement of the premier U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (SC) Exascale Computing Preparation (ECP) projects Linac Coherent Light Source II and LCLS-II-HEh.

It is anticipated that, by 2025, the project will routinely move science data between the beam-lines and one or more of the high end computing facilities within the DOE complex at >1Tb/s (i.e. 10x100Gbps point-to-point).

Exascale computing is essential for maintaining the nation’s advancing sciences, and improving the economic well-being of the society.

Any company that has HPC requirements stands to benefit from the equipment used in the recent 1PB transfer test. Whether working with a content delivery network, big data, data centers, cloud service providers, or as a backup solution provider, you need a new solution for faster data throughput in order to remain competitive.

A range of industries will need to take advantage of Exascale computing, oil and gas, media and entertainment, life sciences, defense and intelligence agencies, large retail businesses, to name a few. Newly emerging fields such as AI, machine learning, smart cities, and autonomous vehicles are no exceptions.

Four of AIC’s SB122A-PH 10-bay NVMe 1U storage servers were used in the test, along with 16 Intel Corp.’ Optane P4800X U.2 375GB SSDs from Intel Corp.‘s Non-volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG).

The company’s SB122A-PH is a 1U server that is symmetrical in architecture design, enabling it to deliver performance than other servers currently on the market.

The test sent data along a 5,000-mile loop that goes from the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (SC)’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) in Meno Park of California, Sunnyvale, CA, El Paso of Texas, Houston, TX, Nashville, TN, and Atlanta, GA and back to SLAC/Menlo Park.

This is the world’s only 5,000-mile 100Gb/s loop available and has been established by the Energy Science Network (ESNet) for the SLAC/Zettar’s efforts since 2015. ESNet is operated by the DOE’s SC. It runs the world’s fastest network for science and connects DOE SC laboratories together and to the other parts of the Internet.

Click to enlarge

Transparency is critical when it comes to evaluating high-speed data transfer milestones like the recent successful 1PB effort. The test performed by Zettar, Inc. is likely the only one in the world whose results were publicly viewable (and can be seen on the ESNet’s Network portal for a limited time).

“Zettar has been capable of handling multiple PBs of high speed data transfers weekly for several years” said Dr. Chin Fang, founder and CEO, Zettar. “Even with massive amounts of data, this test confirmed once more that it’s completely feasible to carry out long distance, fully encrypted and checksum-ed data transfer at nearly the line-rate, over a shared and production network. As is, there is a physical limit of 80Gb/s bandwidth cap in place. Also, the transfer every now and then must deal with other contending traffic. Otherwise, the rate would have been even higher. Nevertheless, the current average 75Gb/s or 94% bandwidth utilization are both what we expected under such circumstances.“

The company will be at the 2018 Supercomputing (SC) show in Dallas, TX from November 12th to 15th.