Zettar Transferred, with Encryption, One Petabyte of Data in Just 29 Hours Using AIC Servers
CITY OF INDUSTRY, Calif., Oct. 4, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — AIC announces a recent world-record accomplishment: one petabyte in 29 hours encrypted data transfer, with data integrity checksum unconditionally enabled, over a distance of 5000 miles. The average transfer rate is 75Gbps, or 94% utilization of the available bandwidth of 80Gbps. The company’s SB122A-PH, 1U 10-bay NVMe storage server provides the critical storage service.
This strenuous and production-level trial is part of the intense preparation for the ambitious data transfer requirement of the premier U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (SC) Exascale Computing Preparation (ECP) projects Linac Coherent Light Source II and LCLS-II-HE. It is anticipated that, by 2025, the project will routinely move science data between the beam-lines and one or more of the High End Computing facilities within the DOE complex at > 1 Tbps (i.e. 10x100Gbps point-to-point). Exascale computing is essential for maintaining the nation’s prestige, advancing sciences, and improving the economic well-being of the society. For context, an exabyte is equivalent to 1,000 petabytes.
Any company that has high performance computing requirements stands to benefit from the equipment used in the recent 1-petabyte transfer test. Whether working with a content delivery network, big data, data centers, cloud service providers, or as a backup solution provider, you need a new solution for faster data throughput in order to remain competitive.
A wide range of industries will need to take advantage of Exascale computing, oil and gas, media and entertainment, life sciences, defense and intelligence agencies, large retail businesses, to name just a few. Newly emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, smart cities, and autonomous vehicles are no exceptions.
Four of AIC’s SB122A-PH 10-Bay NVMe 1U storage servers were used in the test, along with16 Intel Optane P4800X U.2 375GB SSDs from Intel’s Non-volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG).
AIC’s SB122A-PH is a 1U server that is symmetrical in architecture design, enabling it to deliver better performance than other servers currently on the market.
The test sent data along a unique 5,000-mile loop that goes from the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (SC)’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) in Menlo Park of California, Sunnyvale of California, El Paso of Texas, Houston of Texas, Nashville of Tennessee, and Atlanta of Georgia and back to SLAC/Menlo Park. This is the world’s only 5,000-mile 100Gbps loop available and has been established by the Energy Science Network (ESNet) for the SLAC/Zettar’s efforts since 2015. ESNet is operated by the DOE’s SC. It runs the world’s fastest network for science and connects DOE SC laboratories together and to the other parts of the Internet.
Transparency is critical when it comes to evaluating high-speed data transfer milestones like the recent successful 1-petabyte effort. The test performed by Zettar is likely the only one in the world whose results were publicly viewable (and can be seen on the ESNet’s Network portal for a limited time).
“Zettar has been capable of handling multiple PBs of high speed data transfers weekly for several years” said Dr. Chin Fang, Founder & CEO of Zettar Inc. “Even with massive amounts of data, this test confirmed once more that it’s completely feasible to carry out long distance, fully encrypted and checksum-ed data transfer at nearly the line-rate, over a shared and production network. As is, there is a physical limit of 80Gbps bandwidth cap in place. Also, the transfer every now and then must deal with other contending traffic. Otherwise, the rate would have been even higher. Nevertheless, the current average 75Gbps or 94% bandwidth utilization are both what we expected under such circumstances.”
AIC will be at the 2018 Supercomputing (SC) show in Dallas, Texas from November 12th to 15th. Visit booth #4153 to meet and speak with the team.
About AIC:
AIC is a leading provider of both standard OTS (off-the-shelf) and OEM/ODM server and storage solutions. With expert in-house design, manufacturing and validation capabilities, AIC’s broad selection of products are highly flexible and configurable to any form factor, standard or custom. AIC leads the industry with over 20 years of experience in mechanical, electronic, system-level engineering as well as a dedication to innovation and customer satisfaction. Headquartered in Taiwan, AIC has offices and operations throughout the United States, Asia and Europe.
About Zettar:
Zettar Inc. delivers GA-grade, scale-out, petascale-proven all-in-one hyperscale data distribution software solution capable of multi-100+Gbps, along with a reference design for a data transfer cluster, and a burst buffer reference design. Together they are the foundations of a highly efficient petascale-proven data transfer solution today. The critical burst buffer design leverages the industry leading AIC SB122A-PH 1U 10-bay NVMe storage servers. Zettar is a National Science Foundation funded software startup in Palo Alto, California. It collaborates with the US DOE SC National Laboratories, supercomputing centers, and ESNet.
