CASE STUDY
High-speed Infrastructure for CEA Saclay’s Carriocas Grid The Bigger Picture By Laura Poulter
With a budget of nearly four billion dollars and more than 15,000 employees in 10 centres throughout France, the Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA) is a leader in research, development and innovation. This multidisciplinary centre employs 5000 researchers seeking to unravel the mysteries of matter, life, new technologies, nuclear waste and more – studies that rely on simulation and the development of sophisticated tools.
One CEA Saclay grid project, Carriocas, explores and develops hardware and software components of a fibre optic network at high speeds – 10 Gbps per channel – for developing distributed applications for the purpose of meeting two critical industrial needs: interactive digital simulation on supercomputers and remote processing and visualisation of very large volumes of data stored remotely and in a distributed manner. This project required a high-performance, reliable, available and secure solution, and one that also met the cost needs of CEA Saclay
Saclay deployed the company’s BlackDiamond 8800 series core switches. This product, featuring 10 gigabit scalability and gigabit density for switch-to-server interconnects, is a dense gigabit chassis with high availability and comprehensive security. “We thought the solution proposed
by Extreme Networks was best for the project needs and those of Carriocas. It offers high performance and functionality and we ensure sustainability of our investment,” said Jean-Pierre Meyer, Mission Manager for Computing at Irfu of CEA Saclay. The number of servers connected
GRIF project has received more and more data which needs to be analysed, meaning it requires a great deal of bandwidth. Through the infrastructure, over 1200 analytical jobs have been processed in parallel, seamlessly and transparently. Despite analysis demands three times larger than expected, production continued smoothly, underlining the robustness of the solution. “With Extreme Networks, Carriocas was complete. We were able to operate under very good conditions due to the integration of a non-blocking solution for applications,” Meyer commented.
Since 2010, with the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, the GRIF project has received more and more data which needs to be analysed, meaning it requires a great deal of bandwidth.
while at the same time meeting the demands of this high-speed telecommunications network. In 2007, the organisation started
reviewing alternative solutions to replace its network. In addition, as part of the high-speed communications network, this new solution would need to support a proposed grid (Grid Search Ile-de-France, GRIF). Extreme Networks was chosen for
the infrastructure due to its high- performance, robust feature set, and total cost of ownership. CEA
42 NETCOMMS europe Volume I, Issue 6 2011
allows up to 1600 simultaneous users, meaning that even though the number of users is also likely to evolve as the number of processor cores and machines is constantly increasing as a result of the increased need for distributed computing, the network will easily keep up. CEA Saclay decided to take full
advantage of the solution from the switches which had been implemented by integrating them into the GRIF. Since 2010, with the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, the
“Excellent results have been achieved due to the strengthening of the infrastructure network project.” The needs and challenges of data analysis are ongoing and they will continue to grow as demands change. CEA Saclay is preparing to adapt and evolve its network infrastructure by adding more components to its network, extending its engine room and more, in order to remain as competitive as possible.
www.netcommseurope.com
Image: CERN
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52