ECONOMICS

Topspin Communications, the leader in switched computing, today announced that the Air Force Combat Climatology Center (AFCCC) has selected Topspin's Server Switch as the fabric for its new weather data network. The Topspin Server Switch will help the AFCCC reduce hardware costs and improve performance by enabling consolidation on commodity servers and affordably scaling storage throughput. The AFCCC collects and processes over 30 years worth of worldwide weather data in support of climatology projects such as projected weather conditions, frequency of mission-limiting weather conditions, weather limitations on weapon system deployment, and crosswind studies. Military planners use this information to maximize the advantage of the weather on military operations and minimize the impact of adverse conditions on friendly operations. The Topspin solution provides the AFCCC with a high-performance InfiniBand interconnect that enables them to reduce costs by replacing their aging and expensive server architecture with a cluster of commodity servers running the Linux operating system, while also improving performance. Additionally, the virtual I/O capabilities of the Topspin Server Switch allows the AFCCC to scale their storage throughput to meet rapidly growing requirements without deploying a costly swarm of host bus adapters (HBAs) and Fibre Channel switch ports for each server. The volume of data moved in and out of storage is anticipated to quadruple to 20GB a day over the next five years. "In our business of volume data and complex analysis, I/O rules," said Keith Schoultz, technical systems lead for the AFCCC. "Extremely fast I/O performance is critical to our operation. The InfiniBand solution delivers this performance and allows us to leverage the economic benefits of server clustering at the same time. We're excited about the performance we're seeing and anticipate this to equate to an incredible return on investment." The solution, which was integrated by Intelligent Decisions, runs an Oracle 9i RAC database and consists of a Topspin 360 Server Switch with Topspin Fibre Channel gateways, ProMicro servers with Topspin InfiniBand Host Channel Adapters (HCAs), and Texas Memory Systems RamSan 220 solid-state storage. Initial performance testing indicates a compelling improvement over the legacy server system, especially for storage throughput. "Topspin is pleased to be working with the AFCCC on this mission-critical project," said Stu Aaron, vice president of marketing at Topspin. "This is an excellent example of the inherent value of the server switch. By providing both a high-performance server interconnect and a virtual I/O capability to an entire server cluster, we help customers maximize their performance without breaking their budget."