ACADEMIA

Silicon Graphics and YottaYotta announced today that WestGrid has successfully deployed the SGI InfiniteStorage Shared File System CXFSTM in conjunction with the YottaYotta NetStorager System across a distance of over 1,000 kilometers. WestGrid (Western Canada Research Grid) is a $50-million project to operate grid-enabled high performance computing and collaboration infrastructure at institutions in Alberta and British Columbia. Its resources are provided at no cost to researchers across Canada. Westgrid selected SGI and YottaYotta to deliver remote visualization and geographic data grid services to Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of Alberta (UofA). "WestGrid has created an environment for world class computational research with resources located at universities across Western Canada," said Dr. Rob Simmonds, chief technology officer of WestGrid. "The addition of the YottaYotta system greatly simplifies the task of exploring massive data sets generated on computers located more than 1,000 kilometers from our primary SGI visualization server." Together, SGI and YottaYotta provide the capability to deploy a single shared file system across thousands of kilometers, permitting customers to intelligently share a consistent data image at local SAN rates - enabling compute, storage, and visualization resources to be leveraged across multiple distributed sites. "This project demonstrates that data grids do not have to be limited to single site or campus deployments," said Martin Pinard, President SGI Canada. "The SGI and YottaYotta solution will allow users spread across the WestGrid environment to experience transparent and secure access to shared data, even if it's physically located thousands of kilometers away." The SGI/YottaYotta Data Grid Solution Together SGI's clustered file system, CXFS and YottaYotta's Global Block Services offer a new standard in data grid service. The combined SGI/YottaYotta solution provides access to a globally consistent name space at local performance rates. A common way to share data between sites is to duplicate it by using FTP to copy files from storage at one site, to storage at another site. This model suffers from excess data duplication, excess WAN traffic, and increased challenges with version management. With the SGI/YottaYotta solution, the user experience is fundamentally different from the traditional FTP model. Rather than having to log on to a remote server, initiate an FTP session, and download files, the user is provided with transparent local access to remote files as if they were sitting on his or her desktop. "The deployment of the SGI/YottaYotta data grid solution validates that distributed data processing across geography is now a viable option as opposed to duplicating compute and storage infrastructure," said Wayne Karpoff, chief technology officer and co-founder of YottaYotta.