APPLICATIONS

Force10 Networks, the pioneer in building and securing reliable networks, today announced that the University of Tennessee physics department has deployed the C300 resilient switch to analyze data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator that will collide beams of protons and gather data that is produced during the collisions. The Force10 C300 is at the foundation of the university’s new high energy physics cluster, which will have the processing capability to efficiently analyze the massive amounts of data produced by the LHC. “To analyze the data from CERN’s collider in a meaningful way, we knew that we would need a supercomputer that was both scalable and demonstrated predictable performance under all situations,” said John Lankford, senior infrastructure architect at the University of Tennessee. “The Force10 C300 brings us the reliable high performance we need to study the LHC data and the seamless interoperability between our high energy physics cluster and the Force10 E-Series switch/routers in StarLight through which we gain access to that data.” The recently introduced Force10 C300 delivers the reliability, network control and scalability the university requires to process the large volume of data from the LHC. Aggregating and interconnecting more than 150 nodes, the C300 anchors the university’s new high energy physics cluster, allowing researchers to analyze the data that is captured upon collision. With support for 384 line-rate Gigabit Ethernet ports, the Force10 C300 provides the scalability the University of Tennessee requires to connect to its servers. The university also leverages the line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet density of the C300 to connect the physics cluster to the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory via StarLight, one of the largest research and education access points in the world. Fermi Lab, a tier one center for the LHC project, is connected to CERN and will act as a distributor of the data to the university as well as other research and education organizations. “The University of Tennessee is at the forefront of investigative physics and is among the country’s pioneers in leveraging the network for the advancement of science,” said Stephen Garrison, vice president of marketing at Force10 Networks. “The C300 delivers the high performance and software sophistication of the E-Series in a cost-effective platform that allows the university to conduct leading edge science on a reliable, scalable network.” CERN has deployed the Force10 TeraScale E-Series to power the four networks that are collecting data from the LHC particle collisions. Additionally, CERN has built a 40 Gigabits per second (Gbps) campus network with the TeraScale E-Series. To advance science, CERN is sharing the data it collects with research organizations around the world via a 10 Gigabit Ethernet WAN link from its campus in Geneva to StarLight in Chicago, the largest research exchange in the world. Reliable Networking by Force10 delivers the reliability, control and scalability enterprises require to build a unified network fabric from the data center to the wiring closet. With similar performance characteristics across the network, enterprises can ensure that their network is flexible to respond to evolving and emerging applications.