The University of Queensland Builds UltraFast Data Storage Fabric with Powerful DDN Storage
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Country
- Australia
Product
- DDN’s GS7K® parallel file system appliance
- IBM Spectrum Scale file system
Tech Stack
- IBM Spectrum Scale
- DDN GRIDScaler
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Digital Expertise
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
About The Customer
For more than a century, The University of Queensland (UQ) has educated and worked with outstanding people to develop knowledge leadership for a better world. Across the University’s three campuses, UQ’s 7,000-member staff and 50,000 students deliver and experience unparalleled teaching, learning, and research excellence that creates positive global change. With nine internationally recognized research institutes on site, UQ is a pacesetter in discovery and translational research across a comprehensive spectrum of disciplines, ranging from bioscience and nanotechnology to mining, engineering, agriculture, social sciences, and humanities. According to Professor David Abramson, director of the Research Computing Centre (RCC) at UQ, pushing the research envelope requires the fastest, most efficient access to data storage and computing systems.
The Challenge
The University of Queensland (UQ) is a leading academic institution with nine internationally recognized research institutes. The researchers at UQ are making landmark discoveries in various fields and depend on the IT infrastructure to deliver ultra-fast, multi-site data access. The University needed to ensure universal data access regardless of where researchers are based or data is created, manipulated, and archived. The University uses QRIScloud, a high-capacity cloud compute and storage node of the NCRIS national research infrastructure operated by the Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF). Exchanging data between campus computing clusters and QRIScloud was done manually to date, which wasn’t the best use of valuable research time. Equally important was the proactive need to address constant, organic data growth resulting from increased research collaborations.
The Solution
To accelerate time to discovery, UQ needed a high-performance data storage fabric that could span the main campus and offsite data center to accommodate research workflows without interruption, and a big data storage platform that could provide local cache storage as a foundational part of their metropolitan data caching infrastructure (MeDiCi). UQ purchased and deployed two DDN GS7K® storage appliances with 500 TB of capacity. One was deployed at the IT Services (ITS) data center on campus while the other was implemented at QBI to support neuroscience research. The way UQ engineered its MeDiCi data storage fabric, data from scientific instruments goes into a local file system, which then moves the data automatically to a file system attached to UQ’s HPC environment.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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