Storage systems for national information assets

An industry-led collaborative project, called the National Storage Laboratory (NSL), has been organized to investigate technology for storage systems that will be the future repositories for the national information assets. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory through its National Energy Research Supercomputer Center (NERSC) is the operational site and the provider of applications. It is anticipated that the integrated testbed system will represent a significant advance in the technology for distributed storage systems capable of handling gigabyte class files at gigabit-per-second data rates. The NSL collaboration is undertaking research in four areas: network-attached storage; multiple, dynamic, distributed storage hierarchies; layered access to storage system services; and storage system management. An overview of the prototype storage system is given. Three application domains have been chosen to test and demonstrate the system´s effect on scientific productivity; climatic models, magnetic fusion energy models, and digital imaging