NASA Ames Inks Lustre Support Deal With Whamcloud
Whamcloud, a venture-backed company formed from a worldwide network of high-performance computing (HPC) storage industry veterans, today announced a Lustre support contract with the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Lustre, the massively parallel open source file system, is used extensively within NAS. NASA Ames has over $3.0 billion in capital equipment, 2,300 research personnel and a $600 million annual budget and plays a critical role in virtually all NASA missions in support of America’s space and aeronautics programs. The contract is for up to five years of Lustre support.
“File systems and supercomputers are evolving separately, and integrating multiple generations of hardware and software is a requirement for the NAS facility. We have moved to a data-centric model where the file system is a standalone component that persists between generations of supercomputers. Lustre is the key element to make this work,” said Bob Ciotti, supercomputing systems group lead and lead system architect for the NAS Division. “Our plan with this effort will allow for better operational continuity as we continue to evolve our super-scale computational environments.”
“Being chosen by NASA to support their Lustre operations is an extreme honor. NASA is a world leader in a wide range of research areas involving heavy computation. Fast and reliable data movement & storage is required to make use of the large computers,” said Brent Gorda, CEO of Whamcloud. “NASA depends on computational results for scientific discovery, design and mission operation. We’re excited to be a part of supporting their research and the smooth operation of the data path.”
Pleiades, NASA’s largest system, ranks 7th on the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers and has Lustre file systems that provide nearly 10 PB of storage and serve over 110 thousand cores. In a data-centric model where compute is attached to storage, Lustre provides shared data access between all major systems at the center including the hyperwall-2 visualization system and the Columbia supercomputer. Scientists are running large-scale jobs on these systems to gain insight into Earth’s ocean and climate variability, reduce harmful emissions from aircraft, and design future vehicles for planetary and space exploration. The systems were also critical to supporting debris damage assessment on space shuttle missions and gave managers data about critical decisions to perform repairs and clear the orbiter for safe landing.
About NASA Ames Research Center
NASA Ames Research Center, located at Moffett Field, California, was founded December 20, 1939, as an aircraft research laboratory by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and in 1958 it became part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). One of 10 NASA field installations, it is located in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley at the core of the research cluster of high-tech companies, universities and laboratories that define the region’s character. With over $3.0 billion in capital equipment, 2,300 research personnel and a $600 million annual budget, Ames’ economic impact is significant. Ames plays a critical role in virtually all NASA missions in support of America’s space and aeronautics programs.
About Whamcloud
Whamcloud, composed of HPC storage veterans and well-known Lustre experts, implements and supports Lustre solutions in HPC centers around the world. Whamcloud actively promotes the growth, stability and vendor neutrality of Lustre. Lustre is utilized in over half of the TOP500 supercomputing sites today and is the best evolutionary technology for addressing many of the exascale issues of tomorrow. http://www.whamcloud.com
Contact:
Media
Jesse Casman
Whamcloud
415-730-2793
