SoftIron Joins Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System Consortium

SoftIron Ltd., in task-specific data center solutions, joined the Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS) Consortium, which supports the development of free open source software for data discovery, workflow automation, secure collaboration, and data virtualization.

In joining the consortium, whose data management platform is used by research, commercial and governmental organizations, SoftIron has certified that its open source, Ceph-based HyperDrive Storage Appliances are compatible with the iRODS architecture.

“With the open-source nature of Ceph and its ‘Swiss Army Knife’ capabilities that combine file, block, and object storage within the same infrastructure, we think that SoftIron’s HyperDrive storage appliances are a perfect complement to organizations using iRODS, and who want to scale their storage in a supported, simplified, flexible way,” said Phil Straw, CEO. “And, we’re especially pleased to formalize our membership this week, to coincide with BioData World Congress. The event hosts some of the world’s leading life science organizations – many of whom use iRODS as a key data management platform in pharmaceutical research – enabling collaboration in their pursuit to solve some of the world’s great challenges. These organizations are already using open source iRODS to advance their mission critical research, so we’re excited to showcase what SoftIron and Ceph can do to provide them with performance, flexibility and scalability gains, as well as reducing their TCO.“

“SoftIron and its strong orientation to open source is a great addition to the iRODS ecosystem,” said Jason Coposky, executive director, iRODS Consortium. “Ceph has been gaining traction with both vendors and end-user organizations engaged with iRODS. Welcoming SoftIron, which purpose-builds hardware to optimize every aspect of Ceph, as a member brings immense value to that ecosystem. We look forward to collaborating with SoftIron as we work together to bring added capability and flexibility to the iRODS community.“

In order to give iRODS users and others in life, bio and pharmaceutical sciences a perspective in using open source Ceph as part of their operational foundation, SoftIron’s Andrew Moloney, VP of strategy, has organized during the BioData World Congress on November 9th, 2020, a presentation titled Redefining SDS – All the Performance, Without the Complexity. The discussion concerned the most important drivers of HPC storage growth, the operational challenges in storage infrastructure, and various infrastructural approaches for building SDS architectures.