STORAGE

LOS ANGELES, CA -- DataDirect Networks, a provider of the world's highest performance storage networking appliances, announced that NASA-Goddard has achieved new system management efficiencies with their existing Silicon Storage Appliance implementation. The division has deployed four of DataDirect Networks' S2A 6000 Silicon Storage Appliances to distribute and accelerate satellite imaging and data analysis information; using Silicon Storage Appliances, NASA-Goddard can now manage 130TB with minimal system administrator oversight. The ability to easily manage the high performance, high capacity system by using a fraction of traditional system administrator resources brings substantial Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and productivity gains for NASA. "The principal reasons that we've selected Silicon Storage Appliances for our imaging and analysis needs were the combination of application acceleration and reliability brought about by each appliance," Scott Sinno, MODIS UNIX Administrator, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said. "We continue to use Silicon Storage Appliances for the simple configuration and detailed onboard diagnostics that make it very easy to tune and easy to manage our environment." Tasked with analysis and distribution of satellite imaging data to develop a detailed understanding of Earth and global climate change, the Terrestrial Information Systems Branch needed a dependable, highly scalable solution that could keep pace with data and application requirements of the project. As a storage networking company that creates highly scalable, simple to deploy and easy-to-manage solutions for business and government, DataDirect has always excelled in the demanding imaging, simulation and visualization environments required by governmental agencies. With this reputation firmly in place, and superior testing results from an evaluation unit, NASA Goddard bought their first Silicon Storage Appliance and then returned to buy a second, third, fourth and fifth appliance to meet expansion requirements in the group. Imaging Key to Understanding Global Change Orbiting 438 miles above the Earth is EOS-Terra, the billion dollar flagship spacecraft of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS). Aboard Terra is a state-of-the-art sensor for studying interactions among the Earth's atmosphere, land and oceans, the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS.) Each day, MODIS takes the pulse of planet Earth, watching atmosphere, oceanic and terrestrial changes, and relays this information to ground stations in the United States. Data from MODIS is transmitted to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center where it is processed to create global data products. The global products are used by scientists to study long-term global change and in applications like forest fire monitoring. At Goddard, the information is moved from disk and tape into a mixed data center environment of comprised of Linux and SGI Origin servers, DataDirect Silicon Storage Appliances and storage, with four Silicon Storage Appliances managing an overall storage environment of 130 usable terabytes of data. Performance of the DataDirect-enabled systems is key, with 1.5 TB of data moving through the network and out to servers and workgroups each day. In addition to MODIS support, a fifth Silicon Storage Appliance with 7TB of storage functions at the heart of a Goddard-wide SAN testbed. For more information visit www.datdirectnet.com.