One of DataDirect Networks’ latest clients is the Tokyo Institute of Technology, or TokyoTech, which uses the company’s Web Object Scaler to support the Education Academy of Computational Life Sciences curriculum.

Students and faculty in the department have access to the TSUBAME 2.0 supercomputer, but the university wanted a number of extras that its existing infrastructure couldn’t accommodate: a more cost-efficient storage system to handle data-driven workloads, a file sharing service, and the ability to make that service available for not only PCs but also for iPhones and iPads.

TokyoTech chose DDN to help with the upgrade, and this case study provides some added details about the deployment.

The institution has installed a 360-terabyte cloud powered by three Web Object Scaler servers and another three WOS6000 systems with an individual capacity of 120 terabytes. TokyTech said it chose DDN’s hyper-scale solution for a few reasons, including the data protection that’s offered, thanks to built-in replication and self healing. WOS also simplifies scaling, as the name would suggest, and the high-density storage nodes it powers reduce overheads by a sizable margin.

“Files are uploaded by teachers and students via their PC through the WOS Cloud Client. In addition, data from a variety of equipment throughout the Academy, including images and  other biological sensor data, voice data, movies and text data  are uploaded by S3 applications developed by TokyoTech.”

WOS is a solution that managed to live up to much of the hype that surrounded it at launch by actually addressing some of the challenges that involve large-scale cloud environments. It was enough for DataDirect Network to become a part of Facebook’s Open Compute Project, an initiative that tackles this very area.   The social network pioneered hyper-scale by addressing the necessity of having to support hundreds of millions of users worldwide.