HPC I/O in the Data Center

Managing scientific data at a large scale is challenging for scientists but also for the host data center. The storage and file systems deployed within a data center are expected to meet users' requirements for data integrity and high performance across heterogeneous and concurrently running applications.

With new storage technologies and layers in the memory hierarchy, the picture is becoming murkier. To effectively manage the data load within a data center, I/O experts must understand how users expect to use these new storage technologies and what services they should provide in order to enhance user productivity. We seek to ensure a systems-level perspective is included in these discussions.

The HPC-IODC workshop is a forum to present and discuss work that addresses the storage challenge from a unique perspective, moving the focus from the application-centric perspective to the perspective of data centers and operators. In the workshop, we bring together I/O experts from data centers and application workflows to share current practices for scientific workflows, issues and obstacles for both hardware and the software stack, and R&D to overcome these issues.

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Organizers:

• Jean-Thomas Acquaviva (DDN)
• Jay Lofstead (Sandia National Laboratories)