ENGINEERING

HP  has announced that Purdue University is using the container-based HP Performance-optimized Data Center (POD) to expand and speed its ability to deliver research projects.

Known for its world-leading research in nanotechnology, structural biology and atmospheric chemistry, Purdue is committed in its strategic plan to doubling current research efforts. To this end, Purdue has been adding server clusters to its data center every summer for the last three years.

Constrained by budget, power and space limitations, Purdue has now turned to the HP POD to deliver a cost-efficient, containerized environment that can be quickly deployed. HP POD also integrates multiple vendors' hardware into interoperable pools of resources that can be tapped on demand.

By implementing the HP POD, Purdue estimates it can expand its research capabilities by 50 percent within a matter of months for less than one-third the cost of building a new data center. Furthermore, the portability of the HP POD enabled the university to place it in front of a power plant, eliminating the possibility of power transfer and capacity issues.

"We provide the resources for world-leading research, and delaying this work while building a new data center facility simply wasn't an option," said John Campbell, associate vice president, Academic Technologies, Purdue University. "With the HP POD, we'll deploy an entire new data center in a matter of months at a fraction of the cost of a traditional data center, while being able to support all of our current, as well as anticipated, research initiatives."

To permit Purdue's faculty to conduct leading-edge research, including modeling climate change and designing next-generation nanoscale electronics, Purdue's Rosen Center for Advanced Computing also is building a new supercomputer. "Rossmann" is composed of a 1,000-node HP Cluster Platform 4000 based on HP ProLiant DL165z G7 servers with dual 12-core AMD Opteron 6100 series processors.

The high-performance computing cluster enables Purdue to achieve three times more cores and memory per node than previous clusters, which can accelerate research projects and scientific discovery. Rossmann also delivers a dramatic increase in throughput by allowing massive file access and 10 Gigabit Ethernet interconnects.

"As one of the nation's leading research universities, Purdue University has set a precedent for innovation in high-performance computing," said Madhu Matta, vice president and general manager, Industry Standard Servers, HP. "The HP POD allows research institutions like Purdue to increase their compute capacity in a way that is cost-effective and enables productivity and scientific breakthroughs without the need to expand their existing data centers."

Purdue's newly acquired data capacity will support faculty from aeronautics, agronomy, climate science communications, medicinal chemistry, molecular pharmacology, biology, engineering, physics, statistics and other academia.

Increased compute capacity will be used in diverse ways, from modeling climate change and developing new medicines to engineering more efficient rocket engines and designing next-generation nanoscale electronics.

The HP POD, available in 40- or 20-foot containers, addresses key requirements for businesses, educational institutions and government agencies looking to deploy scalable, flexible and secure infrastructures across multiple locations. Apart from traditional capacity expansion, the HP POD can be used during renovations as a temporary data center or for disaster recovery as a backup data center. HP POD Infrastructure Services ensure support for both HP and third-party components.

More information on HP PODs is available at www.hp.com/go/pod.