ACADEMIA

One of Nation's Foremost Neurological Research Centers Leverages Clustered Storage to Power Critical Research Advancing the Scientific Understanding of the Brain: Isilon Systems, the leader in clustered storage, today announced that UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI) has deployed Isilon IQ to store the world's largest repository of high resolution neuro imaging data. This data -- which can be as large as 200 Gigabytes per subject -- represents the pioneering laboratory's collective knowledgebase and serves as a critical research foundation for learning more about brain function and health, and better understanding complex diseases such as Alzheimer's and schizophrenia. UCLA's LONI serves as the hub of a national neuro imaging resource which supports more than 60 national and international brain imaging collaborations. "We recognized some time ago that as imaging resolution continued to improve, our storage requirements would grow geometrically, putting a significant strain on our storage capabilities as well as impeding our researchers' ability to gain instant access to this critical information," said Rico Magsipoc, Chief Technology Officer, LONI. "Quite simply, there was no way we could keep up with our data requirements at the rate we were growing. We evaluated several storage solutions and Isilon came out far ahead of the pack due to its inherent scalability and system redundancy. Best of all, whereas it used to take four days to add storage to our SAN, we can now add Isilon nodes in about 10 minutes, without any system downtime." Using Isilon IQ, powered by Isilon's OneFS operating system software, LONI has consolidated large repositories of neuro imaging data into one single volume and is providing high performance, concurrent access to hundreds of researchers worldwide who can instantly retrieve, collaborate, and analyze the 16,000-plus subject scans currently stored on-site at LONI's Los Angeles laboratory. Prior to adopting Isilon IQ, LONI relied on an array of SAN storage, limiting the research center's ability to quickly share data between its storage resources and its high-performance computing farm. Because LONI's researchers are often accessing the same datasets at the same time, data throughput also presented a major obstacle to researcher productivity. Meanwhile, managing the SAN also proved to be an administrative headache, requiring a full-time dedicated storage manager. In contrast, Isilon clustered storage has enabled LONI to easily scale its capacity, unify its image archive into one single file system, and realize a three-fold performance increase in network bandwidth. Moreover, the entire clustered storage system no longer requires a dedicated storage administrator, freeing up valuable development resources. "The researchers and scientists at LONI are conducting vitally important research that necessitates intensive storage requirements, high availability, and the ability to quickly scale," said Brett Goodwin, VP of Marketing & Business Development, Isilon Systems. "With Isilon IQ, LONI can focus its development efforts on producing scientific breakthroughs rather than worrying about storage limitations. Our clustered storage architecture is ideal for a high-performance computing environment like LONI and we are excited to help enable the next generation of scientific innovation." Isilon IQ delivers the industry's first single file system that unifies and provides instant and ubiquitous access to the rapidly growing stores of digital content and unstructured data, eliminating the cost and complexity barriers of traditional storage architectures. OneFS 4.5 is a unified operating system software layer that powers all of Isilon's award-winning IQ family of clustered storage systems including the Isilon IQ 1920, 3000, 6000, Accelerator, and EX 6000, which are available immediately.