(Video) Customer: Design the most energy efficient system in the world. Seagate: Okay.

Customers typically have good reasons for making exacting demands on their vendor partners. In this case the German Climatology Department’s had some precise requirements to an install at it’s facilities in downtown Hamburg – as such they had a finite power ceiling within which to make the system operate.

This was the subject of a video interview between Torben Kling-Petersen, Seagate’s Principal Engineer, HPC and Strategic Engagements and insideHPC. The full piece can be seen herehighlights appear below.

“In this video from SC14, Torben Kling-Petersen from Seagate describes an upcoming deployment of a 55 Petabyte Lustre file system in Hamburg, Germany. The ClusterStor deployment will be the most energy-efficient file system of its kind in the world upon installation.”

insideHPC: “….What can you share?”

Torben Kling-Petersen: “…yes we are working on a 55 petabyte single name space, file system for the German climatology department…it’s the biggest file system ever built in the lustre file system type. The reason they chose us over anybody else in the marketplace is that this is a data center in downtown Hamburg. They have a total max capacity from a power point of view of 1.3 megawatts. And they need a 3 Petaflop system and a 55 Petabyte storage system. ..in order to get that to work, you need the most energy efficient system in the world and we’re pretty much, at this point in time.”

 

insideHPC: “…there’s got to be a lot of IO requirements and density, right?”

TKP: “…we have a 55 petabyte system that would be in a total of about…23 racks, which is kind of in a class of its own, delivering more than half a terabyte per second throughput. So, 560-570 gigabytes per second, which is not leading by any choice, but for a system this size, that’s a fairly impressive step. So it will be not the fastest device at the moment on earth, it will be one of the largest ever developed, but more importantly, it will be the most energy efficient ever developed.”

 

insideHPC: “Wow. When does it get deployed, can you tell me?”

TKP: “Let’s put it like that. I will be spending a lot of time in Hamburg starting in January.”

2015-01-13T18:25:59+00:00

About the Author: