SCIENCE

As Obsidian Strategics continues to deliver High Performance Computing (HPC) technology into the Enterprise Data Center, the company is introducing a new storage transport solution at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas, this December 6th, 2010.

Faced with power efficiency and scale-out optimization across multi-core servers running virtualized workloads, data center architects are increasingly turning to open-standard InfiniBand – the dominant HPC interconnect - as a fast, scalable LAN solution. Obsidian's patented Longbow technology enables InfiniBand's superior switch and adapter performance to span the globe over standard optical WANs.

At the Gartner show, Obsidian is launching - dsync+ - an easy to use file migration tool that works with the complete family of Longbow products to very efficiently fill long-distance, high-capacity WAN connections providing an end-to-end bulk data transport system. At the recent Supercomputing 2010 event in New Orleans, Obsidian worked with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and Avetec's DICE program to compare different file migration solutions – including dysnc+ over multiple 1,200 mile Longbow E100 10Gbits/s WAN links between Greenbelt, MA and New Orleans, LA.

“The combination of Obsidian's Longbow E100 and dsync+ again proved to be a very powerful data transport mechanism,” said Hoot Thompson, working for GSFC, “...sustaining roughly 2,000 megabytes per second at the file system level, at 82% efficiency over multiple 10Gbps optical paths with multiple handoffs, and full encryption”.

Tracey Wilson, technical director and program manager of DICE (Data Intensive Compute Environment) that conducted the evaluation in New Orleans, pointed out that there is often a large gap between theoretical numbers (ie. 10Gb optical links) and real-world performance (actual throughput is often 20% or less over distance and one tenth of that when encrypted): “The DICE program aims to objectively measure and validate 3rd party solutions for data intensive environments. The dsync+/Longbow performance is to be commended, including as it does storage, file system and WAN overheads, and all the while also offering the security of AES. Authentication and encryption are often neglected in HPC domains, but are considered table-stakes for Enterprise Data Center deployments. At 82% efficiency, the dsync+/Longbow combination is at a minimum an order of magnitude above today’s common practice.”

Meet Obsidian in booth 42 at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas December 6th-9th.