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Viglen delivers £4m contract for petascale data processing and storage in UK's major environmental science facility(M2 PressWIRE Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Viglen, a British IT company, has delivered a 4m contract covering the design, supply and installation of a turnkey integrated HPC computing, storage and network solution to upgrade JASMIN, a major environmental scientific data analysis and simulation facility requiring petascale processing, run by the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) on behalf of NERC (Natural Environment Research Council). Established in 2012, JASMIN is a super-data-cluster serving the environmental science community - particularly as a scientific platform for manipulating data from earth observation and climate and weather models. During its first year of operation it reached optimum capacity, so this expansion of the facility will enable JASMIN to bolster its role as a system supporting many varied science communities. Existing users include the academic component of the facility for Climate and Environmental Monitoring from Space (CEMS) the Centre for Environmental Data Archival (CEDA), and the national centres of Earth Observation and Atmospheric Science. Other environmental science disciplines will also be supported after the upgrade. Its new 4000 core compute capability features 200 servers, manufactured by Viglen, who configured a complex, multi-vendor solution using a 10GB Mellanox network and an additional 7 Petabytes of Panasas disk - all delivered within a very tight timeframe. Viglen is a 'Top Global Panasas Partner' and the solution supplied and installed at STFC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire is one of the largest storage solutions in the world. JASMIN's expansion was funded by the National Environmental Research Council (NERC) to supplement its high performance storage capability, enabling it to continue providing cutting-edge data analysis resources to UK academics and partners and for its expanding user base. "Following its successful launch, JASMIN was quickly operating at optimum capacity and we had a dire need for additional power and storage," said JASMIN Infrastructure manager Jonathan Churchill. "Viglen won a competitive tender on price and performance with its integrated compute, network and storage solution, which is also allowing us to add much improved cloud capability." One of the solution's key benefits is flexibility - the RAL team can deploy whichever solution best suits the task they wish to run; from a virtualised environment to a traditional HPC environment. "We now have low latency network interface levels for message passing interface (MPI) programmes which means we can run bigger parallel jobs and more of them," continued Jonathan. "Viglen also met the tough challenge of integrating JASMIN phase two with JASMIN phase one, doing a good job understanding our requirements and integrating that into our solution." While many of its projects fall within the areas of climate science and earth observation, JASMIN2 is now additionally able to support wider communities and smaller projects based on a range of cloud services. New projects include environmental genomics, hydrology, and earthquake science. Commenting on the contract, Viglen chief executive Bordan Tkachuk said; "This has been a very important, high profile project for us. The STFC's Scientific Computing Department spearheads the exploitation of grid and cloud and big data technologies throughout the council's programmes, the research communities they support and the national science and engineering base. This has a significant scientific and economic impact on the UK - as well as including a big international element as well. I am delighted that the design and roll out went so well - it was a huge task to integrate everything in such a tight timeframe." Media contact: Carolyn Boosey & Richenda Wood Livewire Public Relations E: [email protected] E: [email protected] T: 020 8339 7440 To download a high res version of this image (Bordan Tkachuk, CEO, Viglen): http://livewirepr.com/files/livewire-image-library/Bordan_Tkachuk_Managing_Director_Viglen_Portrait_shot.jpg About Viglen: Viglen has been, and continues to be, a leading British provider of innovative IT solutions to the Education and the Public Sector. With a pedigree second to none, Viglen is today one of the fastest growing IT solutions organisations, offering a totally integrated end-to-end service. About STFC The Science and Technology Facilities Council is keeping the UK at the forefront of international science and tackling some of the most significant challenges facing society such as meeting our future energy needs, monitoring and understanding climate change, and global security. The Council has a broad science portfolio and works with the academic and industrial communities to share its expertise in materials science, space and ground-based astronomy technologies, laser science, microelectronics, wafer scale manufacturing, particle and nuclear physics, alternative energy production, radio communications and radar. STFC operates or hosts world class experimental facilities including: oIn the UK; ISIS pulsed neutron source, the Central Laser Facility, and LOFAR. STFC is also the majority shareholder in Diamond Light Source Ltd. oOverseas; telescopes on La Palma and Hawaii It enables UK researchers to access leading international science facilities by funding membership of international bodies including European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL), European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). STFC also has an extensive public outreach and engagement programme. It is using its world leading research to inspire and enthuse schools and the general public about the impact and benefits that science can have on society. STFC is one of seven publicly-funded research councils. It is an independent, non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). Follow STFC on Twitter @STFC_Matters www.stfc.ac.uk . (c) 2014 M2 COMMUNICATIONS |
