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™, GS12K™) 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 @SGI_Corp, @DDN_limitless
@Brightcomputing @metoffice #BritainsWeatherExpert
http://bit.ly/2dWYvQK
- UK Met Office chooses @SGI_Corp @DDN_limitless @Brightcomputing
for more accurate weather prediction @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™, Bright Cluster Manager for Big
Data™, and Bright OpenStack™ 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 (@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@grayling.comSGI Investor Relations Contact: Ben Liao | (669)
900-8090 | bliao@sgi.com
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SGI and the SGI logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of
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