RCC has installed new data storage technology for UQ that should save researchers time and money.
Zero Watt Storage (ZWS) is able to house large volumes of data on disk drives, without the high operational costs usually associated with hard-drive based storage devices.
ZWS powers down disk drives when they are not in active use, conserving electricity usage.
If data is required from a ZWS drive, data streaming can begin within a minute, usually 15–35 seconds. This is at least twice as fast as UQ’s previous tape-based storage system and can be many times faster compared to tape systems under heavy demand.
ZWS can also stream many more files in parallel— potentially about 100 files—for a single user.
RCC HPC Manager Dr David Green said: “The ZWS slides in seamlessly into UQ's existing data storage. Researchers will not need to do or know much else about it to gain the tremendous benefits the ZWS will impart.”
Installed at the Polaris Data Centre in Springfield earlier this month, where UQ stores much of its offsite data, ZWS can store a massive five petabytes (5 PBs) of data.
Purchased from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), UQ’s ZWS is comprised of seven ‘bricks’, each with 70 12TB disk drives. Additional ‘bricks’ can be bought at a later date to expand the available capacity.
ZWS has become an active component of the high storage capacity backend that underpins UQ’s Metropolitan Data Caching Infrastructure (MeDiCI) data fabric and UQ Research Data Manager (UQRDM) collections.
A number of highly active UQ data collections have been prioritised for full migration to ZWS. In the first 10 days of operation, 33 TB of data was transferred onto ZWS.
Initially, less active data collections will have only new files written into the ZWS. Over time, all data in non-archival, or disk only, collections will be migrated.
Please contact the RCC Support Desk if you have any questions about UQ’s Zero Watt Storage.
