2010 Best Practices Competition IT & Informatics HPC

to the data. It then applies object dedupe and content‐aware compression to the
natural semantic objects found within.
The object dedupe approach finds object duplicates in compressed, encoded data
that would never be found using standard block dedupe. After processing object
duplicates, the ECOsystem then applies content specific compression to the
remaining unique object. This dual approach provides better space savings than
either block dedupe or generic compression alone would. Ocarina’s ECOsystem
includes multiple data compressors for the types of files commonly found in
research computing environments and includes over 100 algorithms that support 600
file types.
> ROI achieved:
As compared to the alternative of disparate storage "islands" managed by various
independent departments, Cornell experienced a substantial ROI through the
consolidation and optimization of a globally accessible storage pool.
By deploying scalable, high‐speed DDN S2A Storage with intelligent Ocarina data
optimization software, Cornell projected a nearly full return on investment
within as little as one year. Aggregate capacity requirements were reduced,
administration was consolidated and economies of scale were gained. It is
expected that the savings associated with a cost‐effective
(capacity‐optimized) petabyte‐scalable storage pool, in addition to the FTE
savings the University realized, will have fully paid for the new system within
12 months time.
> Conclusions:
As multi‐departmental and multi‐application organizations adopt higher fidelity
research tools and engage in high‐throughput research, storage requirements will
balloon across the enterprise. As evidenced at Cornell, a well planned storage
consolidation, optimization and deployment strategy can not only allow
researchers to focus on research, but also aids organizations through substantial
cross‐departmental budgetary relief. Scalable storage systems from DataDirect
Networks, coupled with intelligent file‐format‐aware Ocarina Networks storage
optimization software, have proven to enable consolidation, savings and
simplification with tools optimized for the life sciences researcher.
References: DDN Case Study:
http://www.datadirectnet.com/index.php?id=246
Drug Discovery News Article:
http://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/index.php?newsarticle=2787
GenomeWeb Article:
http://www.genomeweb.com/informatics/ocarina‐pitches‐content‐aware‐compressionapproach‐storing‐life‐science‐data?page=1