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 2 June 2008
ClusterVision Delivers First Server Farms for Dutch BiG Grid
ClusterVision, specialist in high performance compute, storage and
database clusters, has been selected as one of the preferred
suppliers for the BiG Grid project — the Dutch eScience grid — and
signed a framework contract that allows it to participate in
mini-tenders for compute power with a total potential value of
5 million euro. The first two mini-tenders have already been won
by ClusterVision and server farms with more than 1500 Intel® Xeon® processor cores in total
have been installed at BiG Grid partners Nikhef and SARA.
BiG Grid will provide a grid infrastructure for eScience in general
and for life sciences and particle physics in particular. Big Grid
is a 28,8 million euro project that will run for five years. The
main goal of the project is to provide the infrastructure for the
science grid in the Netherlands, including technical and user
support. BiG Grid's ambition is also to attract new user
communities to the grid.
The cluster at Nikhef will allow BiG Grid to act as one of the Tier
1 centres for the CERN led Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project.
When the LHC is active, about 800 million events are created every
second. In total the LHC will generate 16 Petabyte (16000 Terabyte)
of raw data each year. This has to be accessed and analysed by
scientists all around Europe. Hence there are about 10 large centres
created in Europe that will store data, have large computational
power and fast network access. These are the so-called LHC Tier 1
centres.
"I am very happy that BiG Grid, after a careful tendering process, has
now finally been able to build up quickly the resources for the Dutch
Tier-1. With the first colliding beams of the LHC imminent, it is for
Nikhef very important to be prepared to handle the tremendous amount
of data coming out of the experiments. Our community has been working
towards this moment for more than a decade!" stated Prof. dr Frank Linde, Director
of Nikhef and co-director of BiG Grid.
"In the RfP phase of the tendering process, the proposal by
ClusterVision was highly ranked by BiG Grid, on the basis of which they
have been selected as one of the three preferred suppliers for computing
equipment. We are pleased to see, that in this first round of
mini-tenders this promising score has materialised in two very
competitive and winning offers from Clustervision. We are also very
happy with the timely and professional delivery and installation,"
stated Drs Arjen van Rijn, Chairman of the BiG Grid Technical Committee.
"We are delighted that Big Grid has selected ClusterVision to deliver
the first two large server farms to Nikhef and SARA, allowing us to make
a modest contribution to this major national science project,"
stated Dr ir Matthijs van Leeuwen, Sales Director ClusterVision.
About the BiG Grid Consortium
BiG Grid is a collaboration between Nikhef, NCF and NBIC. NCF — the
Dutch National Computing Facilities organisation — is responsible
for the administration of the project and has the ambition to enable
the whole Dutch research community to have access to a
state-of-the-art grid infrastructure. NBIC is the Netherlands
BioInformation Centre. NBIC has a BioAssist programme that aims at
supporting biological application
domains with an ICT infrastructure. BiG Grid wil be used as
part of this supporting infrastructure. Nikhef is the Dutch National
institute for subatomic physics and closely collaborates with CERN
in Geneva.
About ClusterVision
ClusterVision is specialist in the design, implementation and support of small- and large-scale computer clusters. Their clustering technology provides a cost-effective alternative to traditional supercomputers by connecting multiple computers to form a unified powerful computing system. ClusterVision's team of experts has designed and built some of the largest and most complex computational, storage and database clusters in Europe. With a background in applied scientific research and practical experience with a wide range of HPC technologies, the team understands customers' requirements and provides tailor-made solutions. ClusterVision has offices in Amsterdam, Gloucester (UK), Munich, Paris, Geneva, Milan, Oslo and Madrid.
For more information
Dr ir Matthijs van Leeuwen
ClusterVision BV
Nieuw-Zeelandweg 15B
1045 AL Amsterdam
Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 407 7550
Fax: +31 84 759 8389
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| Engineers checking the electronics on an LHC dipole magnet. Processing data from the LHC will play an important role in Big Grid. (© CERN)
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