Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 3.5: The Blue Waters external server subsystem. [Image courtesy
of Paula Popowski.]
system composed of automated tape robots and caching disk under the control
of.
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The near-line subsystem provides traditional archive functions as well a
new, closely integrated hierarchical storage manager (HSM) between the on-
line and near-line storage that is under development, is the largest HPSS
system in the open science community.
Blue Waters initially deployed fifty (50) Dell R720 servers for data move-
ment, two IBM large 64 processor servers with a database environment for
HPSS metadata, an extensive fourteen data rate IB fabric, a usable 1.2-PB
(raw 1.8-PB) disk cache subsystem dedicated to HPSS, four SpectraLogic 19-
frame T-Finity tape libraries with approximately 20,000 slots each, and 244
TS1140 tape drives. The near-line system provides a capacity of raw 380 PB
and approximately 100 GB/s in performance. In 2014, a planned expansion
will add two more libraries with an additional 122 tape drives for a total of
366 tapes drives at 240 MB/s each. The upgrade will complete NCSA's near-
line storage with approximately 120,000 media cartridges. If media density
increases in the future, the total capacity of the near-line storage subsystem
will increase proportionally.
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www.hpss-collaboration.org
