The US Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) has deployed mode than two petabytes of Isilon scale-out NAS to power a wide range of genomic research initiatives into clean energy generation and environmental characterisation and cleanup.
Using Isilon's X-Series, featuring its OneFS operating system, JGI has unified 25 genome sequencers onto a single, high performance, highly scalable, shared pool of storage, reducing storage management. The JGI is also using the Isilon IQ 5000S-SSD, which combines SAS and Solid State Disk (SSD) drives as an additional storage resource for its team. With Isilon scale-out NAS, JGI has eliminated more than six disparate storage systems, unifying its mission-critical genomic data stores.
Operated by the University of California (through Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and supported by the DOE Office of Science, the JGI unites the expertise of five national laboratories to advance genomics research in support of DOE missions related to clean energy generation. Prior to deploying Isilon scale-out NAS, the JGI used more than six network file system (NFS) servers to power its 25 DNA sequencers. As the JGI's genomic sequencing operations expanded, its NFS servers were unable to scale in-line with demand, fragmenting data across its separate file systems and limiting the performance of both the JGI's sequencing applications and 1,600 core clustered compute farm.
By unifying its DNA sequencing operations onto 2PB of the Isilon IQ 72000X, the JGI has centralised data access. With its leading-edge, highly data-intensive R&D work powered by a separate, Isilon IQ 5000S-SSD cluster, the JGI's DNA sequencing operations have a unified and dedicated storage resource, eliminating data fragmentation and performance bottlenecks to help speed scientific discovery.
