Case Study: The University of Alabama at Birmingham achieves a 100‑Gb/s, three‑data‑center high‑performance research network with Dell Technologies

The University of Alabama at Birmingham bridges three data centers with a 100-gigabit network fabric from Dell Technologies

The University of Alabama at Birmingham needed a reliable, high‑speed network to support data‑intensive scientific research and an expanding Cheaha supercomputer environment that now includes NVIDIA DGX A100 GPU systems. To eliminate throughput bottlenecks as compute and storage were distributed across three sites, The University of Alabama at Birmingham partnered with Dell Technologies, deploying Dell EMC PowerSwitch networking and the Dell EMC SmartFabric OS10 platform (alongside servers using 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors).

Dell Technologies implemented a 100‑gigabit spine‑leaf fabric linking three data centers (including a commercial DC Blox site) with redundant long‑range 100Gb optics, 400Gb switches, and a 200Gb non‑blocking private‑cloud fabric; internal private‑cloud traffic is estimated at up to 6.4 Tb/s and the fabric moves data across the three data centers at 100 Gb/s. The Dell Technologies solution broadened access to HPC resources, accelerated time to results for researchers, and provided the high‑bandwidth foundation for an envisioned statewide research consortium.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham

John-Paul Robinson

HPC Architect