Case Study: Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) achieves 10× faster metadata I/O and doubles research storage capacity with NetApp

Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center Improves I/O Performance to Prepare for Petascale Research Computing

Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) is Poland’s leading academic HPC facility supporting national and international research, but rapid growth (about 2 TB/day) and EU‑funded projects pushed its storage to the limits. Researchers faced latency, IOPS contention, and slow namespace scans as PSNC prepared to scale to petaflop computing, while also needing a simpler administrative model and storage that would support virtualization and cloud initiatives.

PSNC deployed NetApp E‑Series systems for bulk data and a NetApp EF‑Series flash array for metadata, connected to Linux GPFS clusters and managed via SANtricity for a unified interface. The change more than doubled research storage capacity, delivered metadata 10× faster to eliminate noticeable latency, simplified management, supported VMs/OpenStack initiatives, and reduced space and power needs for future petascale growth.

Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC)

Maciej Brzez'niak

Storage Systems Specialist