IBRIX Fusion Segmented File System Selected by NCSA.

BILLERICA, Mass. -- IBRIX Fusion Accelerates Processing Speed of Highly Complex Cosmological Data Exceeding Seven Terabytes at the Laboratory for Cosmological Data Mining

IBRIX(TM), Inc., inventor of the Segmented File System(TM), today announced that the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has implemented IBRIX Fusion(TM), an enterprise-class, fully-integrated parallel file system solution, on its 256-node Radium mini-cluster which supports the Palomar-Quest (PQ) project. Since deploying IBRIX Fusion, NCSA has seen a marked improvement in overall storage infrastructure utilization. The flexibility and purely software-based nature of IBRIX Fusion has allowed NCSA to deploy commodity hardware components resulting in significant reduction in capital expenditures. Previously, the Radium cluster had no local storage, with the exception of internal drives for temporary space. Following the deployment of IBRIX Fusion, applications were able to share a large data store across the entire cluster with good performance.

NCSA is a recognized world leader in high-performance computing, networking, storage, and data mining applications. The NCSA HPC environment includes systems that provide more than 40 teraflops of computing power and 1 petabyte of spinning data storage; from the 2,560-processor Dell Xeon cluster with peak performance of more than 15 teraflops that offers 140 terabytes of storage, to an SGI Altix SMP system that provides 6 teraflops and 370 terabytes of storage. The NCSA machine room and the NCSA mass storage archive hold more than 1 petabyte of data.

"Since IBRIX Fusion is a multi-purpose file system solution, it has allowed deployment in several very diverse applications," said Michelle Butler, technical program manager at NCSA. "In addition, IBRIX has allowed us to eliminate cumbersome and wasteful copying of data in and out of the cluster by providing a fast, scalable parallel file system. As a result, we have enabled applications running on the Radium cluster managed by Condor to be more streamlined, have local storage, and increased performance by deleting some very costly and expensive processes of copying of data in and out of the cluster. For further information about the Condor Flock Software, please visit http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/UserInfo/Resources/Hardware/Condor/.

The Sky is Not the Limit

The Laboratory for Cosmological Data Mining (LCDM) at NCSA is addressing the challenges presented by the large data volumes being generated by current astronomical surveys. To best understand how our universe formed and has evolved, different approaches are being used, including measuring the cosmic background radiation, studying galaxy clusters, and understanding quasars (super massive black holes) and their relation to large-scale structure in the universe. All of these approaches require the analysis of massive quantities of highly dimensional and complex data that are currently multi-terabyte in size, and are expected to surpass the petabyte regime by the end of the decade. Since the IBRIX Fusion parallel file system has been running on NCSA's 256-node PIII mini-cluster named Radium, the laboratory has been obtaining fast, accurate results from the enormous volume of raw data harvested for the survey.

"Quasar variability has been monitored and studied before on a much smaller scale," said Robert Brunner, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Illinois and an NCSA research scientist. "Now we are surveying large portions of the entire sky, repeatedly, over a number of years, and the data we are analyzing changes constantly, which makes this a significant effort. The IBRIX Fusion software solution has enabled our cluster to process significant quantities of data, via a file system currently exceeding 7 terabytes in size, with great efficiency and speed." For further information about the Palomar Quest Survey at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, please see related article "The Big Picture," published by NCSA. The article is available at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/News/Access/Stories/index.hmtl.

IBRIX Fusion Software Suite

IBRIX Fusion allows enterprise system administrators to build file systems that can scale to up to 16 petabytes of capacity in a single namespace, and provide up to one terabyte per second of aggregate input/output (I/O) throughput performance, independently and non-disruptively as the demands of the enterprise grow. IBRIX Fusion, a purely software-based solution, increases application performance, simplifies administration, and reduces total cost of ownership. IBRIX Fusion is hardware, network, and protocol independent and can be deployed as either a host-installed cluster file system solution or exported over network file system (NFS), common internet file system (CIFS), or other industry standard protocols as a scalable network attached storage (NAS) solution.

About NCSA

NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) is a national high-performance computing center that develops and deploys cutting-edge computing, networking and information technologies. Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NCSA is funded by the National Science Foundation. Additional support comes from the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, private sector partners and other federal agencies. For more information, see http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu.

About IBRIX, Inc.

IBRIX(TM) delivers increased application performance to enterprise computing environments utilizing a unique, software-based parallel file system solution. Its patented Segmented File System(TM) is the basis for IBRIX Fusion(TM), a suite of software products that comprise the most scalable, economical, multi-purpose file system solution available for cluster computing, grid computing, and enterprise computing environments. IBRIX Fusion simplifies management, delivers maximum flexibility, and reduces total cost of ownership. The IBRIX Fusion Software Suite is available through leading OEMs. IBRIX is headquartered in Billerica, MA. For more information, please visit our website at www.ibrix.com.

IBRIX, IBRIX Fusion, and Segmented File System are trademarks of IBRIX, Inc. All other brands, products, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of the companies with which they are associated.