Seagate Collaborates With CERN OpenLab

Seagate Technology plc announced it has entered into a three-year partnership with CERN OpenLab to collaborate on the development of the its Kinetic open storage platform.

The partnership aims to help CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to better manage and store the 100PB of data the Large Hadron Collider has generated to date, as well as the additional 2-3PB of information it produces on a monthly basis in its quest to further humanity’s understanding of the universe.

“CERN creates a truly astonishing amount of data on a daily basis, and finding secure and efficient ways to store that information is one of the most important challenges we face,” said Alberto Di Meglio, head of CERN OpenLab. “We are excited to collaborate with Seagate on understanding how the Kinetic storage architecture could potentially contribute to the CERN infrastructure and aid the very demanding LHC program, by reducing complexity and operational costs in our storage systems.“

The Kinetic platform restructures the traditional storage server architectures from the bottom up, connecting object-oriented applications directly to the storage device. By cutting out the many layers of hardware and software used in traditional stacks, it improves performance while cutting costs – by 15-40%.

“This is a thrilling opportunity for Seagate to collaborate with CERN to more efficiently operate one of the most extreme and demanding storage environments in the world,” said Scott Horn, VP marketing, Seagate. “We believe our partnership will not only deliver extensive benefits to CERN’s large-scale storage system, but also help us further enhance the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform by testing it in an unparalleled data creation environment.“

CERN OpenLab, which is entering its fifth three-year phase, is a public-private partnership between CERN and leading ICT companies. Its mission is to accelerate the development of innovative new solutions to be used by the worldwide LHC community. CERN OpenLab provides companies with a framework to test and validate information technologies and services in partnership with CERN.

A second, future research project between Seagate and CERN will look at CERN’s EOS storage system to determine whether there are opportunities to enhance and improve the system.