LRZ Supercomputer Backs Up Big Data With IBM Tape System

ARMONK, N.Y. and GARCHING and STUTTGART-EHNINGEN, Germany, Dec. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM ) announced today that the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) has implemented an innovative IBM tape storage system to provide up to 16.5 petabytes of scientific data archiving and backup for the center's SuperMUC supercomputer. A petabyte is roughly the equivalent of all the content in the U.S. Library of Congress – times 100.

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Designed by IBM in 2010 for the LRZ of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the SuperMUC combines 155,000 general purpose core processors with 320 terabytes of main memory to help scientists from across Europe study all fields of science, from the simulation of the evolution of the universe under the influence of dark matter, to the propagation of earthquakes, and much more. Unique to the design, is the SuperMUC's innovative "High Temperature Liquid Cooling" system that uses hot water to cool the system processors rather than compressed air and fans. As a result, the multicore computer consumes 40 percent less energy than the LRZ's previous supercomputers, dramatically reducing the organization's energy costs.      .

In addition to the innovative processing and cooling, the SuperMUC features 12 petabytes of permanent disk storage. To provide archiving and backup storage for the center's primary and secondary scientific data, IBM teamed with Business Partner SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH, to create a high-capacity, highly-scalable storage system that consists of computers, disk systems and two massive tape libraries in a storage area network.

"What we needed was a system that could store the data streams of one of the fastest computers in Europe, using standard components to keep costs low," said Werner Baur, director of the Storage Group at LRZ. "It had to be scalable so that it is able to keep up with the development stages of the SuperMUC and it had to be able to integrate with our IT environment. That's exactly what we've got."

High-performance solution with flexible components

The intelligent archiving solution consists of two highly scalable IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library systems equipped with 22 LTO 5 drives and 11,000 tape cartridges. All told, the solution has a storage capacity of 16.5 petabytes and is scalable to 40 petabytes.

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