ExCALIBUR HES VAST Storage Interoperability With High Performance Networks/Evaluating Prerequisites for Stable Performant Exascale Ecosystem Workflows

This project will develop a testbed VAST Data Platform for High Performance Computing, building upon the Isambard 3 service, undertaking an evaluation and testing programme and make the resulting system available to ExCALIBUR projects and the wider research community:

- The VAST system will be procured and commissioned via the University of Bristol's existing partnership with HPE, so that compatibility with Isambard 3 can be ensured.

- The project will undertake a test programme to evaluate the efficacy of the VAST approach - with a particular focus on networking and network performance. This will help to inform future work on data federation and next generation systems/services.

- The VAST testbed will also be made available to ExCALIBUR projects and the wider research community as part of the Isambard Digital Research Infrastructure services at the University of Bristol.

This proposal is designed to demonstrate the efficacy of two key elements of Hardware and Enabling Software that are needed to utilise an Exascale Ecosystem:

- A demonstrator access federation for pre-exascale systems using a very thin layer of federated services to lower access barriers and to improve transparency of resource allocation. This work will produce a demonstrator federated access service to enable the testing of exascale sized workflows to run effectively and at scale.

- The most basic exascale sized workflow this will facilitate is the movement of data into/from these pre-exascale systems at scale. SSD systems will be deployed, and their performance tested to measure their stability and performance compared to current disk based technologies.

- These elements are the necessary precursors for the creation of an SSD based data federation and data sharing capability.