NASA Ames Efficiently and Cost-Effectively Manages 13.5 Percent Annual Data Growth with Tape-Based Archive

NASA Ames efficiently and cost-effectively manages 13.5 percent annual data growth with tape-based archive

Tape-based active archive solutions allow Federal organizations to reduce costs for indefinite data retention, ensure data integrity and reliability, and enable multiple users to retrieve classified and unclassified data simultaneously. NASA Ames deploys six 10-frame Nathan Thompson, CEO, Spectra Logic TFinity tape libraries with LTO-7 and LTO-8 drives

About During its earliest days, NASA Ames researchers broke new ground in all flight regimes through construction of increasingly sophisticated wind tunnels, NASA Ames research aircraft, and methods of theoretical aerodynamics. Building upon NASA Ames Research Center, the world’s greatest collection of wind tunnels, Ames research expanded into computational fluid dynamics, simulation technology, information technology, air one of 10 NASA field centers, traffic management research, tilt rotorcraft, and life sciences. is located in the heart of Today, NASA Ames has developed into a world-class research and development California’s Silicon Valley. For 80 campus with partners from academia, industry, and non-profit corporations. The goal is a highly collaborative environment for innovative research and years, Ames has led NASA in educational facilities to train the future workforce. conducting world-class research NASA has been a key participant in the advancement and use of HPC in support and development. NASA Ames of its missions. Applications have included modeling fluid dynamicsphenomena and full aerospace vehicles, Earth’s weather and climate, solar physics and the is one of the world’s leading formation of the universe, and much more. All of these disciplines require high- high-performance computing fidelity numerical modeling of complex systems and processes, and detailed analysis and visualization of large-scale data, both enabled by supercomputing, sites for data and provides to advance human knowledge and technology. NASA with advancements in Fast Facts entry, descent and landing • 219PB of data technologies, information • 2.1PB of data per month technology, next-generation • 13.5 percent increase in data annually • 1,400 square feet of floor space reclaimed aviation improvements, • 1,000 users accessing data at any given time astrobiology, airborne sciences and small satellite programs. They generate approximately Shown at left: NASA Ames testing 2.1 petabytes (PB) per month of the K9 Rover in a new “Marscape” of data related to their research for future Martian and simulation programs. exploration.

Toll Free: 800-833-1132 • 303-449-6400 • 6285 Lookout Road • Boulder, CO 80301 USA • www.spectralogic.com CASE STUDY: NASA Ames Research Center

2009 2014 ® Purchased Spectra T950 with LTO-4 drives and media. The first High Performance Transporter (HPT) is added to 2010 NASA’s evaluation library. First TFinity Exascale tape library purchased in 2016 November with LTO-4 drives. HPT implementation in two production libraries and upgrade 2011 to LTO-7. Purchased a second and a third TFinity library with 2018 LTO-5 drives and media. Upgraded system performance and capacity by purchasing 2013 LTO-8 tape drives and LTO-7 type M tape media. Fourth, fifth and sixth TFinity tape libraries purchased.

The Challenge the users decide to delete it. Ames utilizes entertainment markets, offering industry- Spectra Certified Media with Carbide leading scalability with the speed neces- As one of the leading high-performance Clean® to ensure their media is debris-free sary to meet the requirements of the most computing (HPC) sites in the world, NASA and Spectra’s Media Lifecycle Manage- data-intensive environments in the world. Ames archives more than 219PB of data, ment (MLM) to reduce media-related generating approximately 2.1PB of data issues through its intuitive reporting of Network Environment each month, resulting in an estimated at-risk media that should be retired. The data growth of 13.5 percent annually. All • Seven TFinity ExaScale libraries with MLM reporting is accessible directly from of this data must be retained indefinitely. LTO-7 drives and media (one of these the library or via remote web access, so In 2009, NASA Ames was running out of libraries is a demo unit) they can easily identify whether a tape is data center floor space. Also, they were • High Performance Transporters safe to store data upon by simply checking capped on their available power consump- its health score. • Spectra Certified Media with tion and required an energy efficient, CarbideClean technology cost-effective solution. In order to enable Solution Recap • Spectra MLM (Media Lifecycle continuous access to a growing data set The Spectra® TFinity ExaScale library’s Management) that must be preserved forever, NASA modern design provides a tape archive and purchased two Spectra T950 tape • SGI Data Migration Facility (DMF) backup solution to fully meet the needs of libraries to replace their six Sun/STK 9310 storage virtualization system the Enterprise IT, federal government, high Powderhorn tape libraries. • Active Archive Environment performance computing, and media and The Solution: Space- and Energy-Effi- • ~ 1 EB of total system capacity cient, Highly Scalable Tape Libraries NASA Ames reclaimed over 1,400 square feet of their data center floor space with their initial Spectra Logic purchase. NASA has protected its initial tape hardware investment for nearly 10 years, and migrated FC from the T950 platform to six Spectra Infiniband FC Six Spectra TFinity 10-frame libraries TFinity ExaScale Tape Libraries over time, Ethernet to accommodate changing needs and Supercomputer data growth. Since their data needs to be always available, Spectra’s libraries have FC FC allowed them to complete their significant upgrades in the background without interruption to their users. NASA Ames has an average of 1,000 users saving and accessing data on a regular Supercomputer basis. Due to the critical nature of its Infiniband/Ethernet research, all data is stored forever or until

Toll Free: 800-833-1132 • 303-449-6400 • 6285 Lookout Road • Boulder, CO 80301 USA • www.spectralogic.com