NASA will deploy a data management solution from SGI, in order to manage, store and retrieve the vast quantities of scientific and engineering information.

Currently being implemented at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility at NASA Ames Research Center, the solution is based on the SGI InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility (DMF). NASA will use the DMF solution to quickly and efficiently move older data files to a tape archive, making the much faster disk space self-managing.

The DMF implementation will allow the agency to archive and manage 40 Petabytes of information—an amount equal to approximately 2,000 times the size of the entire print collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.

“From satellite images of our home planet to simulating airflows over new wing designs, NASA research projects can regularly generate multiple Terabytes of data,” said Alan Powers, high-end computing lead at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility. “As our archives grow, so does the challenge of managing and migrating that information to the appropriate storage system. A sophisticated data management facility is an essential enhancement to NASA, allowing us to keep the most requested information accessible when we need it, while efficiently moving the rest to tape archives for future use or reference.”

SGI InfiniteStorage DMF will help NASA adapt to its changing data access patterns. In a typical data life-cycle, new data is accessed intensively, while aging data is needed less frequently, and may remain dormant for many months, or even years, although it may occasionally undergo brief periods of renewed access. With DMF, NASA can define the data migration policy necessary to always keep high priority information close at hand, while lower priority information is seamlessly migrated to tape.

“NASA’s investment in this extensive DMF solution gives administrators control over how data moves from near-line storage to tape archives, ensuring that data migration dovetails with the unique workflow of NASA scientists. And with SGI DMF solutions, NASA can scale well beyond 40 Petabytes as the agency’s data archives grow,” said Raj Das, vice president, storage, SGI.