Case Study: NCSA achieves faster HPC performance and simpler data management with VAST Data

Enhancing Performance and Driving Groundbreaking Research

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) required a modern data platform to manage its complex, 60-petabyte storage environment and meet the high I/O demands of its academic and industry researchers. Their challenge was to simplify operations and improve performance for read-heavy home and software directories while supporting the expansion of GPU-heavy AI research.

NCSA chose the VAST Data Platform for its read-optimized architecture and data reduction capabilities. The implementation resulted in drastically faster performance, with module load times dropping from nine seconds to 2.5 seconds. VAST's solution also delivered a 3.5:1 data reduction ratio, allowing for larger user quotas, and streamlined operations by consolidating infrastructure.

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications

J.D. Maloney

Lead HPC Storage Engineer