San Clemente, CA, May 19, 2005—The National Information Infrastructure Development
(NIIF) Program www.niif.hu is the driving force behind the operation and development of Hungary’s research network. The program covers the entire Hungarian science, education and public collection community by providing a networked computer infrastructure and a wide range of communication information, co-op services, and networking applications.
The means by which the NIIF Program delivers its grid services is through The Hungarian ClusterGrid Infrastructure Project. The ClusterGrid Project integrates Intel processor PC’s into a single, large, countrywide interconnected set of clusters. The PCs are provided by participating Hungarian institutes, such as high schools, universities, or public libraries. Implementing and Coordinating this central infrastructure is the responsibility of the NIIF/HUNGARNET. Members use their PC’s for their own purposes during official work hours and offers the infrastructure for high-throughput computing when PC’s are not in normal use. The combination of “day-shift†(individual mode) and “night-shift†(grid mode) allows grid administrators to utilize CPU cycles that provide high computational infrastructure to the national research community.
IIF useNs EtherDrive Storage Blades for highly scalable storage support in the ClusterGrid project. EtherDrive storage easily accommodates storage needs of the mostly Linux operating system. PC’s use Debian GNU 3.1 systems and grid backbone machines use RedHat 7.3 distributions. Servers with dual 2.0 GHz Xeon processors provide the central entry point. The grid uses Condor as the local scheduler where labs are treated as individual pools that are interconnected by Condor’s native flocking mechanism.
“Through our eighteen year history, we have worked to provide the development program and the people it serves innovative technologies at high value,†says Peter Stefan, Project Manager for the NIIF Program. “The research body plays a key role in introducing the most advanced technologies to the academic and research communities in Hungary. This process often begins with the piloting of new networking technologies and applications to ultimately provide pioneering solutions for the community. EtherDrive Storage Blade is the storage solution the NIIF Program has been searching for. The product provides tremendous scalability at a very reasonable price point—it is flexible and very easy to use.â€
Coraid’s EtherDrive Storage Blades provide a low cost networked storage solution using Ethernet connections between the server and a shared storage array (pool). Multiple servers can access a common disk storage system eliminating wasted captive storage. With EtherDrive Storage Blades, the storage pool can be expanded easily with simple Ethernet connections. Storage array performance is limited only by the number of disks configured for RAID striping and the speed of the Ethernet connection at the server. EtherDrive Storage Blades are Direct Network Attached (DNA) block storage. DNA provides an Ethernet interface for hard disk drives. Coraid offers an optional EtherDrive RAIDBlade/20 Controller for users that don’t want to use Linux software RAID.
About Coraid
Coraid designs and manufactures innovative networked storage appliances. The “power of simple” makes our storage products affordable. Coraid developed the open ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) protocol which is used by EtherDrive storage products. This powerful and efficient protocol leverages the cost advantages of Ethernet to provide true networked storage. For more information please contact Coraid at 877-548-7200 and visit our web site at http://www.coraid.com.”
Link: coraid.com
