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Cray Advanced Storage Architecture
Critical to every high performance computing application is a requirement to be able to get data into and out of the supercomputing system. The data requirements for a single application can run into the gigabytes, with many computer centers offering many terabytes of storage for their end users.
Cray has introduced a comprehensive storage solution — the Cray Advanced Storage Architecture (CASA) — to solve this problem for HPC customers. Cray recognized that HPC customers typically require two very different types of storage:
- very high performance "scratch" storage, tightly integrated with the HPC system, that is used heavily by production HPC applications
- high performance "shared" storage, accessible to computer systems throughout the organization, combined with data management software to store and archive permanent files
These two environments have significantly different technical requirements, making it difficult to meet both with a single technical solution. CASA addresses this by explicitly offering two separate but integrated solutions — one for scratch storage and one for shared storage — each using "best of breed" products from various partners.
- The scratch storage environment is built on the highly scalable Lustre file system, combined with disk storage arrays from Data Direct Networks and/or LSI Logic.
- The shared storage environment is built on high-performance NAS systems from BlueArc, combined with a variety of software and hardware products from Quantum and other partners to allow this data to be effectively managed and protected.
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