ENTERTAINMENT

SAN JOSE, CA -- BlueArc Corp., a provider of the world's highest performance enterprise-class network attached storage (NAS) systems, announced today that it will deploy Si7500 Storage Systems, with a combined storage capacity of 115 terabytes, to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The systems will be used as the Object Storage Target (OST) for LLNL's Multi-Programmatic and Institutional Computing Capability Resource (MCR) cluster project. This multi-million dollar implementation underscores BlueArc's ongoing ability to meet LLNL's performance, scalability and reliability requirements in strenuous production environments together with the company's commitment to customer satisfaction. "OST technology on the BlueArc Si7500 will play a key role in the MCR Lustre file system. It represents a watershed change in the way we build clusters, and provides us with an opportunity to extend the Lustre file system beyond the boundary of the cluster," said Mark Seager, assistant department head for Terascale Systems at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "We believe that BlueArc will be a worthy partner in this storage activity. Not only has system performance stood up to the test in previous cluster builds, but BlueArc's field services organization surpassed our expectations." Once built, this high-performance Linux computing cluster will contain in excess of 700 Nodes with two Pentium 4 processors per node and a peak performance exceeding 6.7 teraFLOP/s. The project will utilize Lustre, a new file and storage architecture, developed in part by Cluster File Systems, Inc., that abandons traditional block-based storage protocols, instead using an intelligent object-based approach and protocol. This allows the Lustre Open Source file system for Linux clusters to scale to over tens of thousands of compute servers accessing petabytes of storage at rates of hundreds of gigabytes per second. The Si7500 Storage Systems, with a combined capacity of over 115 Terabytes, will perform the role of a Lustre Object Storage Target. Because of the tremendous raw throughput required for a project of this scale, BlueArc's hardware-based SiliconServer Architecture with OST is a natural technology match to the performance and scalability requirements of this demanding I/O environment. "This project is a major validation of the scalability, performance and TCO advantages of our SiliconServer Architecture. This large-scale deployment also validates our technology and vision to sustain our leadership position in high-performance enterprise NAS," said Gianluca Rattazzi, chairman and CEO of BlueArc. "We are delighted Lawrence Livermore has entrusted the storage resources for the MCR program to BlueArc." For additional information visit www.bluearc.com