NCSA launched Harbor, a service that provides fast storage for global home and software directories across all NCSA open-science resources. Its deployment has led to a 400 percent increase in application launch performance for the Delta system, among many other gains.
“Over the last two years, we’ve seen a significant increase in GPU utilization from our Harbor users – and in that time, we’ve consolidated our file systems to a single VAST namespace, which has helped to ensure 100 percent uptime, improved application load times and provided a consistent, more interactive experience,” said J.D. Maloney, NCSA Lead HPC Storage Engineer.
To implement Harbor, Maloney and NCSA worked with VAST Data, which specializes in advanced artificial intelligence infrastructure. Harbor and the VAST Data Platform have improved performance and data efficiency, streamlined operations and boosted scalability for future growth.
“With VAST, NCSA and its users now have access to advanced AI infrastructure that can expedite scientific research across every discipline, supporting their ability to process complex datasets, train AI models, and conduct high-performance simulations across various scientific domains,” said VAST Data Global Systems Engineering Lead Subramanian Kartik. “We are proud to be helping these organizations leverage AI to explore new scientific theories and solve complex problems faster and more efficiently.”
As the AI era continues to gain momentum, Delta and DeltaAI are poised to keep NCSA a leader in the field of research computing. Delta is the most performant graphics processing unit (GPU)-computing resource in the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) portfolio, ideal for AI and machine learning applications with a focus on advancing accessibility for individuals with disabilities in high-performance computing. DeltaAI will quadruple NCSA’s AI-focused computing capacity and greatly expand the capacity available within the NSF-funded advanced computing ecosystem.
“DeltaAI will provide powerful capabilities for simulation and data science, with a strong emphasis on support for AI, which is in growing demand across many fields of science and engineering,” said NCSA Director Bill Gropp following the DeltaAI funding announcement.
Read more about the impact of Harbor in this VAST Data announcement and case study.
source: Andrew Helregel, NCSA
