Storage at Indiana University
Massive Data Storage System (MDSS)
What do you do when you need to have a secure, robust backup of your data? When you need to retain data, but also want to free up your online disk space? When you need somewhere to put very large amounts of data? Indiana University's Massive Data Storage System provides a home for all of these needs.
Data are kept safe in two tape libraries separated by more than fifty miles. These tape libraries are connected by I-Light, the high-speed optical network that links the major research campuses in Bloomington, Indianapolis, and West Lafayette both to each other and to national and international networks. Unlike DVDs or CDs, these tapes won't be allowed to grow too old and fail. They will be refreshed approximately every four years as new tape technologies become available.
MDSS is built using the High Performance Storage System (HPSS) and scales extremely well. Over 250 TB of data are already stored in the new system and with current tape technology the system has a peak theoretical capacity of 2.1 PB. New tape technology will raise this to 5.2 PB in 2006. HPSS' modular architecture allows aggregate throughput to scale linearly with additional servers and enables parallel reads and writes, speeding up transfer rates for large individual files.
MDSS supports a variety of interactive, command-line programs (ftp, pftp, hsi & htar), can be reached via a filesystem interface, and supports grid authentication, currently in use for the Teragrid and Atlas projects. Users of MDSS can also publish their files to the web.
For more information on IU's MDSS, see http://kb.iu.edu/data/aiyi.html
