Brisbane data centre tests same Seagate array trialled for Large Hadron Collider

Brisbane-based cloud provider Digital Sense has deployed the world’s first proof of concept for Seagate’s Kinetic Open Storage platform – the same storage array that could help CERN manage data from the Large Hadron Collider.

The platform could allow Digital Sense’s data centre to run the equivalent of a 131-petabyte storage array, utilising 64 physical drives and 32,768 simulated drives – "a virtual storage pool of 32,768 drives".

By comparison, the data from CERN's Large Hadron Collider will generate 100 petabytes of data, which will be stored with Seagate's Kinetic Open Storage platform.

Digital Sense said it could reduce costs up to 75 percent with Kinetic. The technology allows direct attach of disk to network, "eliminating the overhead of an entire storage server tier, which in turn lowers equipment costs", according to a statement from Seagate.

“The physical Kinetic platform has removed the most expensive part of disk arrays: the storage server,” said Digital Sense CTO Michael Tran.

“In addition, it has eliminated the costs of SAS and fibre channel networks and replaced them with simple, scalable, cost-effective Ethernet networking.”

Under proof of concept conditions, Digital Sense recorded up to 100.4 operations per second per disk with Kinetic.

Digital Sense’s customers include departments from the Federal and Queensland state governments, Brisbane Catholic education, YMCA and EziDebit.

What is Kinetic?

Last month, Seagate announced a partnership with CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to collaborate on the development of Kinetic and potentially help manage the roughly 100-petabytes of data created by the Large Hadron Collider, as well as the 2 to 3 petabytes of new data the LHC produces each month.

Seagate has billed a number of advantages of the Kinetic platform, especially for scale-out requirements. 

The Kinetic technology "disaggregates" the storage layer from the compute layer. By allowing applications to directly connect to storage, Kinetic Open Platform promises to remove "superfluous layers of legacy software and hardware".

"The Seagate Kinetic Storage platform is uniquely optimised for explosive-growth, scale-out data centres. The Seagate Kinetic Storage architecture with its disaggregation of storage from compute enables cloud data centre operators to simply add storage as the need for capacity grows," according to Seagate.

It also promises to cut costs for data centre operators, "because Seagate Kinetic Storage drives can interface directly with the applications, thereby eliminating an entire tier of hardware".

Cost advantages include lower capital expenditure by removing the need for storage servers from the data centre, reduced labour costs becuase fewer techs are required to manage storage servers, and lower power consumption thanks to fewer racks supporting the same volume of storage.