Spectra Logic has announced that the University of Edinburgh’s Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC), has selected the company’s T380 tape library to archive 1367Tera-FLOPs, Cray XC30 system, the fastest supercomputer in the UK. This deployment is in support of the ARCHER (Advanced Research Computing High End Resource) project, the newest UK National Supercomputing Service and the nation’s leading high-performance computing service for academic research.
Supercomputer manufacturer Cray Inc. reviewed several storage options to recommend for the ARCHER joint solution, and Spectra Logic’s T380 tape library stood out both in terms of technical specifications and economics. Barry Bolding, vice president of storage and data management at Cray said, “We’ve deployed Spectra Logic libraries in several of the world’s largest HPC projects because, like Cray, Spectra Logic is a leader in performance, quality and support for its customers. In addition these systems are easy to use, reliable, scalable and affordable - all very attractive features for academic institutions.” The installation of the Spectra Logic T380 was smooth and quick, allowing the EPCC team to relax knowing that the data stored on ARCHER was effectively archived.
Lesley Thompson, EPSRC’s Director of Science and Engineering commented, “We are committed to providing top-end advanced computing facilities while maximizing energy efficiency; Spectra Logic has helped us on both counts. The BlueScale interface in particular has made encryption and library management overall very easy and moving the tapes is also a smooth process thanks to the TeraPack trays.”
The investment EPCC made in the Spectra Logic tape library is further protected by Spectra’s TranScale technology: when an organization requires more throughput or capacity than its current library can handle TranScale allows it to re-use its existing components in a new T-Series library chassis.
