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IT for Science Storage Solutions

Last modified by juhaheli@helsinki_fi on 2025/02/04 07:07

IT for Science provides storage services in Kumpula and Viikki. Our storage service solutions are based on Software Defined Storage, which enable us to provide uninterrupted, long term, persistent solutions which serve both to computational resources and general usage. Storage solutions are highly scalable in both throughput and capacity and each contribution increases the performance and capacity of the whole storage solution. Major contributors to the storage solutions  are FCCI consortium, research groups and departments.

  • Vakka is a 1.2 PB storage solution, based on Kumpula and major contributors are CS, Spacephysics and FCCI. 
    • Utilization ˜40% of total capacity.
  • Kappa is a 780TB storage solution, based on Viikki and major contributors are FCCI and Tike.
    • Utilization ˜36% of total capacity.

Basic costs

  • Approximate cost for non-replicated, redundantly build TB is 116€ (Each 600TB storage block includes failover server pair)
  • Approximate cost for Replicated, redundantly build TB is 240€
  • Smallest practicable upgrade chunk, net capacity (based on 8TB spindles): 600TB

Difference between redundant and replication is that redundant storage has all components at least doubled. There is always failover pair that will take responsibility of other component fails due to reason or other. Replication is then one layer further where same data is replicated to two physically separate locations, on redundant systems. Replicated data is safe even in case of major disaster such as fire, or other natural disaster.

What do we serve?

  • Lustre capability for computational resources.
  • NFS/CIFS/SMB shares for other storage needs.

What do we plan to do?

  • Automated data mover from Storage Solutions to CEPH (Allas, Datacloud, other CEPH instances)
    • User can determine which datasets are migrated to CEPH instance
    • For user, visibility to data remains as link, while actual payload is located in CEPH instance.
  • Data replication between two physical instances, Kumpula and Viikki (replicated data cost is ˜240€ per TB)
  • Data Migration & Replication to Other Object Storages
  • Backup solution from non-Lustre capacity
  • Data encryption

NetApp NFS Storage estimates

  • Cost approximation: 270€/TB
  • Smallest practicable upgrade chunk, net capacity: 300TB.