Enhancing research capabilities with improved data storage

18.09.2024

Major upgrade of NIRD Data Lake

We're thrilled to announce that we have upgraded the object storage on NIRD (the National e-Infrastructure for Research Data) to leverage the latest technology, delivering improved performance, strengthened security and streamlined administration. 

Illustration of fast connection and abstract technology.

NIRD is a crucial resource for Norwegian researchers, and this upgrade will significantly enhance the capabilities of our researchers.

Ideal for handling large amounts of unstructured data

Object storage is ideal for handling large amounts of unstructured data, allowing researchers to store petabytes of unstructured data without the need to manage the physical infrastructure. Object storage on NIRD Data Lake facilitates seamless collaboration without moving data between locations. It also allows integration with data processing frameworks and AI/ML platforms, providing fast, and easy access to large datasets for training models and running simulations.

The benefits for you:

  • Faster Performance: Enhanced load balancing and significantly higher I/O throughput, delivering an impressive, measured throughput of 27 GB/s over S3.
  • Features extended scaling: now with support for 10 TB single object sizes and up to 100 million (!) objects per bucket.

Pioneering high-performance object storage

We are the first in Norway to pilot high-performance object storage on the IBM Storage Scale. After long-term testing of the tech-preview solution by a handful of pilot projects, the solution is now upgraded and scaled out to deliver highly available, high-performance object storage, ensuring enhanced reliability and scalability for cloud computing and demanding AI workloads.