ACCELERATE: LIFE SCIENCES - Racing to Find a Cure, TGEN Uses DDN® Storage to Unravel the Genetic Components of Disease, Faster
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- DDN EXAScaler™ File Storage system
- DDN SFA storage system
- Lustre® File System
- SOLiD sequencers
- Dell PowerEdge servers
Tech Stack
- High Performance Computing (HPC)
- 10 Gigabit network interface
- Double fat tree DDR InfiniBand network
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
- Life Sciences
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
- Edge Computing & Edge Intelligence
Services
- System Integration
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) is a leading genomics research institute focused on developing early diagnostics and effective treatment strategies through the understanding and application of genetics. By leveraging state-of-the-art genomic sequencing technology, TGen is at the forefront of understanding the underlying biological effects that are at the root of a broad range of human diseases and disorders. Since its inception, TGen’s mission has been to use genetics to drive decisions and innovations to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Since 2002, TGen’s IT department has been accelerating the discovery process by leveraging new innovative technologies and methods for its user community.
The Challenge
TGen, a leading genomics research institute, was facing challenges with its legacy NAS system which was underpowered and unable to handle concurrent jobs without dragging performance below acceptable levels. Scaling NAS performance was expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, data growth was accelerating, making the existing infrastructure untenable. Genomics, the art of extracting understanding from an organism’s genome, is a complex and data-intensive task. The year-on-year improvements, in volume and accuracy of data being generated by gene sequencing instruments are mind-boggling. As these machines become more productive, the price for gene sequencing, assembly, and analysis drops, enabling new diagnostic methods and disease treatments. However, all this genetic data has resulted in a sea change in how to assemble them into meaningful data, so the analysis can take place.
The Solution
TGen approached Arizona State University Advance Computing Center (A2C2) to collaborate on a best-in-class HPC platform that would address the needs of the University and TGen. The solution was based on a legacy HPC system, coined Saguaro which today consists of over 5,000 processor cores delivering more than 40 teraflops of computation power, a 400TB EXAScaler Lustre scratch space based the SFA12K-40™ Storage Engine, 11 Terabytes of aggregate RAM, 1.5 Giga-bytes of aggregate L2 cache, and a Double fat tree DDR InfiniBand network. By deploying EXAScaler at A2C2, and leveraging a 10 Gigabit network interface between the two facilities, TGen was able to eliminate the assembly bottleneck imposed by their legacy clustered NAS/NFS system. TGEN and ASU now have in place a scalable, high-performance storage solution for both today’s and tomorrows’ research.
Operational Impact
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