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The Scientific Data Challenge
Increasing sensor resolution from ever-growing numbers of sequencers, cameras, microscopes, telescopes, scanners and instruments of all types – along with higher scale and fidelity simulations – are driving a deluge in scientific data that organisations are tasked to process, analyse, store, share and preserve.

Introducing arcastream Storage

arcastream’s high-performance, data-aware, software-defined storage and networking solutions are specifically designed to accelerate the world’s most challenging scientific data workflows. arcastream’s pixstor storage combines flash, disk, tape, and Cloud storage into a unified system that is higher performing, limitless in scale and lower cost than traditional solutions. Data moves seamlessly through various tiers of storage – from fast flash to cost-effective, high-capacity object storage, all the way out to the Cloud – depending on how frequently it needs to be accessed. This allows research organisations to store valuable data more intelligently and economically.

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High Performance Parallel File System with Limitless Scale

arcastream is powered by IBM Spectrum Scale with added ease of use, tiering, cloud integration and relentless support on open standard hardware – greatly reducing costs

Transparent Data Tiering to Object, Tape, and the Cloud

Reserves high speed storage for work in progress, moves everything else to low cost archive, while maintaining a single view of all data

Simplified Management and Workflow Automation

Easy Python API for IBM Spectrum Scale command line tools simplifies management and automates workflow

arcastream Single Namespace Multi-tier Collaborative Scientific Workflow Architecture

Complete Data Awareness and Lightning Fast Search

Intuitive user defined metadata harvesting, tagging and easy search for data – no more tree walks or lost data

Advanced Analytics

Real-time performance, history and trending with statistics reporting about data and its contents through a simple and intuitive graphical interface

Multi-protocol

SMBv2/3, NFS, FTP, HTTP, S3, HDFS and POSIX parallel file system client for extreme performance

Built-in Data Protection and Services

Snapshots, Fail-over, Replication, RAID 6, Quotas, Tiering, Compression, Storage Pools and ILM data placement policies

Effortless Cloud bursting

Painlessly Cloud burst onto unlimited nodes, minimising data transfer and maximising data locality

Consistently Fast Performance

arcastream scatters data across spinning disk, removing the impact of fragmentation, so there is no degradation in performance as the system fills

The Software-Defined Economic Advantage

arcastream deploys its solution on software-defined, open standard hardware, with no vendor lock-in and standard data protection services – providing organisations tremendous economic advantage and purchasing power, now and into the future.

What Makes arcastream So Capable

arcastream is Powered by the IBM Spectrum Scale Parallel File System

A proven high-performance file management system used across thousands of organizations worldwide

  • No risk

Incredible scale, capable of managing petabytes of data and billions of files

  • Aggregates huge storage capacity into a single global namespace
  • File system capacity: 1 Million Yottabytes
  • Stripes data in parallel to disks for extreme, scalable performance

Integrated information lifecycle tools

  • Intelligent data placement to pools and tiers of storage resources such as SSD, Disk, Object, Tape and Cloud within the same namespace, no stranded silos
  • Server-side Flash Local Read Only Cache (LROC) and Highly Available Write Cache (HAWC) for maximum performance
  • Places data based on a file’s “heat”
  • Policy-driven compression

Key Features

Single Seamless View of All Data

arcastream software-defined solutions combine all of your available storage resources (block, file, tape and object) into a single repository with intelligent policy management.

Extract Value with Rich Data Analytics

Analytics provides detailed, report-ready statistics about your data and it’s contents through a simple and intuitive interface.

Collaborate Securely and Globally

arcastream’s collaboration tools allow you to securely access, share, migrate and replicate your data to users and storage resources anywhere in the world.

arcastream Enhancements to IBM Spectrum Scale

arcastream builds on top of IBM Spectrum Scale, delivering innovation across three areas: advanced software that expands IBM Spectrum Scale’s abilities, making it more useful and easier to deploy and manage; comprehensive solution design, to make sure customer workflow requirements and integration goals are met and exceeded; and all- inclusive, expertly delivered “disk to application” unified services and support.

Advanced arcastream Software

  • Centralized control of all file system components from a single interface
  • Pythonic and REST-compliant toolset can be used to automate Spectrum Scale operation and create customized web interfaces
  • Vastly reduced complexity for otherwise difficult to manage file system components
  • Monitoring, alerting, search and analytics
  • High performance tiering to object storage with full path retention so object is directly accessible by cloud applications, enhancing workflow
  • Seamless cloud bursting
  • Multi-site collaboration
  • Cost effective fully protected DR storage via remote arcastream asynchronous replication

Unified Services and Support

  • “Disk to application” holistic solution understanding
  • Direct access to knowledgeable expertise – no “briar patch” support
  • Hybrid managed service: regular maintenance tasks such as firmware and upgrades are handled by arcastream support, rather than the customer’s technical staff
  • Alerts generated by the system are proactively investigated and escalated by ArcaStream support
  • Single point of contact multi-vendor incident management ensures SLA’s and top-quality support experience is delivered
  • Automated weekly health checks

Comprehensive Solution Design

  • Analyze existing environment focusing on workflow requirements, storage, network, and applications
  • Identify issues and bottlenecks
  • Design solution architecture including hardware, software configuration and procurement guidance
  • Integrated system build and implementation

arcastream Monitoring

  • Hundreds of metrics for granular performance analysis through a single pane of glass that extends far beyond simple disk and network statistics
  • Customizable, automated event/response mechanisms for every major component in the solution
  • Alerting
  • Pre-failure detection
  • Auto correction
  • Pool <-> pool data migration
  • Historical problem logging and review
  • Call home capabilities for proactive solution support
  • Logstash plugins for system log analysis
  • Elasticsearch plugins for redirecting performance counters to external elastic instances

Advanced Analytics

Finding migrated data among vast cloud or object stores is easily facilitated with the included search function that can automatically harvest user and application metadata from files allowing lost files to be found by metadata type with simple drill down interface that generates proxy images, videos, audio and documents for quick browse. 

Powerful, Easy Search Capabilities 

Finding migrated data among vast cloud or object stores is easily facilitated with the included search function that can automatically harvest user and application metadata from files allowing lost files to be found by metadata type with simple drill down interface that generates proxy images, videos, audio and documents for quick browse. 

arcastream Fully Protected Storage

arcapix Python and REST API

  • The arcapix Python API provides an easy to learn, pythonic interface for IBM’s complex command line tools for Spectrum Scale
  • The API extends integration of various Spectrum Scale functions to applications and users.
  • Metadata search and retrieval
  • Data lifecycle curation
  • Snapshot control
  • Security Management
  • Rapid development of new automations and interfaces
  • arcastream’s OAuth2 compliant REST interface also provides:
  • Simple GET/PUT interaction with the filesystem
  • Asynchronous control of all available management features

arcastream Web Interface

  • Gateway to all visual arcastream tools
  • Secure, single pane of glass interface for monitoring and managing daily GPFS tasks
  • Snapshot control
  • Fileset management
  • Performance Dashboards
  • Capacity Analytics
  • NFS and SMB Share management
  • Remote call home enablement
  • Support logging
  • Built on arcapix Python API

Result: An Easy to Manage Storage Platform

  • Centralized control of all major file system components from a single interface
  • Python and REST API for file system automation over and above what is provided with Spectrum Scale
  • Vastly reduced complexity for otherwise difficult to manage file system components (condense pages of scripts into just a few lines)
  • Pythonic and REST-compliant toolset can be used to create customized web interfaces over and above what is provided with the solution
  • Open source monitoring, alerting and performance analytics tailored to the exact needs of the administrative workflow
  • Treats proprietary Spectrum Scale metrics as an data source that can be used in open visualization packages such as Grafana
  • arcastream offers hybrid managed services packages, extending your administration team with a trusted and knowledgeable source

Tightly Integrated with the Cloud

In addition to transparent data tiering to the cloud, arcastream storage facilitates effortless, highly efficient Cloudbursting onto unlimited compute nodes when needed, minimizing data transfer and maximizing data locality between data stored on premises and cloud computing resources. Results are automatically transferred directly back to on-premises storage with no manual intervention.

Direct Access to Knowledgeable Expertise – No “Briar Patch” Support

  • Bi-Annual solution performance review
  • Upgrade planning consultancy for system hardware/software refresh
  • Spectrum Scale policy implementation and management
  • Network topology review and tuning
  • Capacity and performance analysis for planning and growth

How We Work

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