CLOUD

After a successful debut at SC2004, StorCloud continues as a special initiative for SC|05 in Seattle, WA to build a High Performance Computing (HPC) storage capability showcasing HPC storage technologies (topologies, devices, interconnects) and applications. Portions of StorCloud will comprise state-of-the-art heterogeneous devices and technologies to build a virtual on-site “storage on request” capability to support researchers and demonstrate high bandwidth applications at the conference. Other portions will be dedicated to supporting specific data intensive applications with predetermined configurations and requirements. The goals of the “production” StorCloud are to: 1) Provide 1 PetaByte or greater of randomly accessible storage to SC2005 participants. 2) Approach a 1 TeraByte per second infrastructure bandwidth. 3) Provide a 1 GigaByte per second backup bandwidth. 4) Provide interoperability between storage systems 5) Manage and allocate resources to SC2005 participants. The StorCloud committee is seeking real-world high performance applications that stress the limits of currently available storage systems or use storage systems in interesting ways. Two classes of applications are being sought. • User applications – those that make use of StorCloud’s unprecedented heterogeneous “petabyte-scale” storage farm to enable showcase applications for demonstration purposes in user’s booth • Challenge applications – those that demand fast transfer rates and/or use multiple file systems in interesting or comparative ways. The committee plans to set up a preliminary storage capability enabling applications with large data sets to populate the storage over a long period of time and then quickly move the data into the operational StorCloud configuration at the show. Additionally, application groups and vendors are encouraged to collaborate on specific application configurations, or proof of concept configurations, and will be supported as part of the StorCloud configuration. Users that are interested in participating in SC|05 StorCloud are asked to provide an application description and profile by March 1, 2005 via http://www.sc-submissions.org. They will begin accepting submissions on February 1, 2005 For information on the StorCloud initiative, please refer to http://sc05.supercomputing.org/storcloud or at storcloud@sc05.supercomputing.org