Beyond Artificial
Virtual Event | 20th February | 1PM (ET)

Sign Up
Customers

NCSA

5 min read
NCSA

Harnessing Data to Drive Scientific Breakthroughs

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois is an R1 research institution that provides high performance compute, cloud compute, research-focused data platform, and expert support to thousands of scientists and researchers across the United States.​

The NCSA currently operates 9 distinct compute environments, with many users having access to multiple systems. In their previous data environment, however, users had to transfer data between these systems manually, taking up precious time and system resources. To remedy this and unify their computing environments under one data environment, the NCSA turned to DDN’s expertise to help create Taiga, a global parallel file system designed to let users focus on their data, rather than managing where it is.​

DDN User Conference at SC22

DDN User Conference at SC22: JD Maloney, NCSA - NCSA Taiga: Research-Focused Storage

Challenges

The NCSA operates nine distinct compute environments, each with its own specialized pipelines, making data movement cumbersome for researchers. Their ​
users needed a unified data platform to seamlessly access and store data across multiple compute environments, while ensuring scalability and performance for efficient processing and adaptability.​

Solution

Taiga, a global parallel file system designed to span across multiple compute environments.

Three 400NVX/400NVX2 units and 1 18KX unit (Combined 25PB of NVME and HDD capacity)

DDN EXAScaler software​

Nvidia HDR Infiniband networking

Benefits


  • Streamlined data access and management by offering a centralized data platform across multiple compute environments.​
  • Easy scalability accommodates increasing user demands.​
  • Automated data backup to the NCSA’s Granite long-term archive.
Quote

DDN’s Exascaler platform provides us with the performance and flexibility we need to give thousands of researchers a central, performant namespaces for all their active data needs.

JD MaloneyLead HPC Engineer, NCSA
Last Updated
Jan 31, 2025 4:45 AM