UK Met Office Installs New HPC System to Significantly Improve Productivity of Weather and Climate Data Analysis
(Thomson Reuters ONE) -
Leading weather agency selects Bright Computing, DataDirect Networks, and SGI to
provide innovative solution
MILPITAS, Calif., Oct. 19, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, SGI (NASDAQ:SGI), a
global leader in high-performance solutions for compute, data analytics, and
data management, together with Bright Computing and DataDirect Networks (DDN)
announced that the Met Office, the United Kingdom's national weather service,
selected the three HPC vendors to provide high performance computing
capabilities for its new Scientific Processing and Intensive Compute Environment
(SPICE) system. SPICE will enable weather and climate researchers to
dramatically reduce time required to analyze massive amounts of climate
simulation data.
The Met Office is a world leading weather forecasting and climate prediction
organization that conducts research designed to protect lives and increase
prosperity. The institution's 500 scientists conduct research using data-
intensive, high-resolution models to increase forecast accuracy and provide a
deeper understanding of climate change. The Met Office required a powerful
system for post-processing data and analysis downstream of the primary HPC
facility. As a result, the UK Met chose SGI to power its SPICE initiative and
upgrade its Managed Archive Storage System (MASS).
SGI was selected by the Met Office for its value and performance, allowing users
to more easily manage multiple servers and increase system utilization rates.
Following the installation in April 2016, the Met Office's researchers
experienced a positive increase in processing capacity, furthering their
understanding of meteorology on a global scale.
To support the growth in its MASS which is a critical adjunct to the Met
Office's supercomputer system archive, the Met Office selected SGI's solution
with DDN storage. MASS acts as a repository or archive for the data resulting
from scientific research carried out on the supercomputer as well as global
observational data. By 2020, this crucial storage archive is predicted to grow
to about 300 Petabytes of weather and climate research data.
To build a well-rounded, turnkey system, the Met Office chose to
integrate Bright Cluster Manager for HPC to deploy the new SPICE cluster over
bare metal, providing single-pane-of-glass management for the hardware,
operating system, HPC software, and users. The Met Office also chose to
install Bright OpenStack to enable the IT team easy deployment, provision, and
management of its OpenStack-based private-cloud infrastructure.
The fact that Bright's solutions can be administered from a single point of
control was a consideration in the Met Office's decision-making process. With
the combined solution of compute, OpenStack, and storage, the Met Office can
scale SPICE storage predictably while delivering high-throughput performance to
handle simultaneous data reads/writes. Using the SGI system, the Met Office's
researchers can spin up virtual machines easily and operate their own private
virtual environment with full control and direct access to their local network.
In addition, they can easily increase the capacity of the virtual environment
merely by adding more servers to the OpenStack environments.
Scientists using SPICE have already noted significant performance advantages
over previous systems, enabling far quicker analysis to support ongoing
research. Massive volumes of data are now analyzed in several hours, rather than
days. The improvements support and enhance ongoing development of meteorological
and climate change research.
Announcement Highlights
* The UK Met Office has selected SGI to power its new Scientific Processing
and Intensive Compute Environment (SPICE), enabling weather and climate
researchers to dramatically reduce time required for analyzing climate
simulation data.
* To upgrade its MASS archive, the Met Office has selected SGI together with
DDN's Storage architecture. Currently, the archive stores about 100TB each
day and is expected to increase to 200TB per day by 2017.
* The Met Office has chosen Bright Cluster Manager for HPC to deploy the new
SPICE cluster over bare metal, providing single-pane-of-glass management for
the hardware, operating system, HPC software, and users. The Met Office has
also chosen to install Bright OpenStack, enabling the IT team's easy
deployment, provision, and management of its OpenStack-based private-cloud
infrastructure.
Technical Information
* The SGI Rackable system for SPICE has 36 nodes Intel® Xeon® processor E5-
2690 v4, achieving performance of up to 30,000 Gigaflops
* Data access and storage for MASS is provided by 3.5 PB of DDN Disk (models
GS7K(TM), GS12K(TM)) to support disk cache
* ConnectX®-3 Pro Adapter with Virtual Protocol Interconnect® for both IP and
InfiniBand® communication
* Bright Cluster Manager for HPC and Bright OpenStack
Supporting Quotes
"With the new SPICE system from SGI, we have seen a step-change in performance
for our researchers and scientists doing post-processing of weather and climate
data," said Richard Bevan, Head of Operational Technology at the Met Office.
"Tasks that used to take 1-2 days to complete are now done in a fraction of that
time, allowing scientists to perform multiple runs in one day."
According to Bob Maynard, storage team technical lead for the Met Office, DDN's
robust, scalable storage for both archive and post-processing delivers
exceptional value and unparalleled performance. "No matter how much we grow, DDN
will continue to provide a performance step-change that will enable scientists
to collect and make sense of massive amounts of data every day for the benefit
of mankind and our planet," he said.
"Everyone who uses Bright technology says it's impressive, but you really start
seeing the power of our technology when you seamlessly connect solutions
together," said Lee Carter, VP EMEA at Bright Computing. "By coupling its HPC
and OpenStack environments with Bright management, the Met Office is in a strong
position to accelerate research, and provide world leading applications and
climate models to both internal as well as external users."
"The Met Office is driving intensive climate research around the globe, and
we're pleased to provide them with an all-inclusive system to power the SPICE
program," said Gabriel Broner, vice president and general manager, HPC at SGI.
"By combining our SGI Rackable solution with Bright Computing and DDN
technologies, we're able to provide the Met Office a strong HPC system that not
only handles massive data workloads, but also allows easier manageability for
researchers and IT managers to operate the computer simultaneously."
Suggested Tweets
* UK Met Office deploys new HPC System (at)SGI_Corp, (at)DDN_limitless
(at)Brightcomputing (at)metoffice #BritainsWeatherExpert http://bit.ly/2dWYvQK
* UK Met Office chooses (at)SGI_Corp (at)DDN_limitless (at)Brightcomputing for more
accurate weather prediction (at)metoffice http://bit.ly/2dWYvQK
About DDN
DataDirect Networks (DDN) is the world's leading big data storage supplier to
data-intensive, global organizations. For more than 15 years, DDN storage has
designed, developed, deployed, and optimized systems, software, and storage
solutions that enable enterprises, service providers, universities, and
government agencies to generate more value and to accelerate time to insight
from their data and information, on premise and in the cloud. Organizations
leverage the power of DDN storage technology and the deep technical expertise of
its team to capture, store, process, analyze, collaborate, and distribute data,
information, and content at largest scale in the most efficient, reliable, and
cost-effective manner. DDN customers include many of the world's leading
financial services firms and banks, healthcare and life science organizations,
manufacturing and energy companies, government and research facilities, and web
and cloud service providers. For more information, go to www.ddn.com or call
1-800-837-2298, and follow DDN via Blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
About Bright Computing
Bright Computing is the leading independent provider of cluster and cloud
management software. Bright Cluster Manager(TM), Bright Cluster Manager for Big
Data(TM), and Bright OpenStack(TM) provide a unified, hardware-agnostic approach
to installing, provisioning, configuring, managing, and monitoring HPC clusters,
big data clusters, and OpenStack clouds. Bright's products are currently
deployed in more than 500 data centers around the world. Bright Computing's
customer base includes global academic, governmental, financial, healthcare,
manufacturing, energy, and pharmaceutical organizations such as Boeing, NASA,
Stanford University, Roche, and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Bright
partners with Amazon, Cray, Dell, Intel, NVIDIA, SGI, and other leading vendors
to deliver powerful, integrated solutions for managing advanced IT
infrastructure such as high performance computing clusters, big data clusters,
and OpenStack-based private clouds. www.brightcomputing.com
About SGI
SGI is a global leader in high-performance solutions for compute, data
analytics, and data management that enable customers to accelerate time to
discovery, innovation, and profitability. Visit sgi.com (sgi.com/) for more
information.
Connect with SGI on Twitter ((at)sgi_corp), YouTube (youtube.com/sgicorp),
Facebook (facebook.com/sgiglobal) and LinkedIn(linkedin.com/company/sgi).
Grayling Public Relations: Crystal Yang | (415) 593-1188 | sgi(at)grayling.com
SGI Investor Relations Contact: Ben Liao | (669) 900-8090 | bliao(at)sgi.com
© 2016 Silicon Graphics International Corp. All rights reserved. SGI and the SGI
logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics International
Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. Intel and
Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other
product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective
companies.
This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients.
The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.
Source: SGI - Silicon Graphics International Corp via GlobeNewswire
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Datum: 19.10.2016 - 15:00 Uhr
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