SoftIron Ltd., the leader in task-specific data center solutions, today announced that it has joined the Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS) Consortium, which supports the development of free open source software for data discovery, workflow automation, secure collaboration, and data virtualization. In joining the consortium, whose data management platform is used globally by research, commercial and governmental organizations, SoftIron has certified that its open source, Ceph-based HyperDrive™ Storage Appliances are compatible with the iRODS Architecture.
“With the open-source nature of Ceph and its ‘Swiss Army Knife’ capabilities that combine file, block, and object storage within the same infrastructure, we think that SoftIron’s HyperDrive storage appliances are a perfect complement to organizations using iRODS, and who want to scale their storage in a supported, simplified, flexible way,” said Phil Straw, CEO of SoftIron. “And, we’re especially pleased to formalize our membership this week, to coincide with BioData World Congress.” The event hosts some of the world’s leading life science organizations – many of whom use iRODS as a key data management platform in pharmaceutical research – enabling collaboration in their pursuit to solve some of the world’s great challenges. Phil continues; “These organizations are already using open source iRODS to advance their mission critical research, so we’re excited to showcase what SoftIron and Ceph can do to provide them with performance, flexibility and scalability gains, as well as reducing their total cost of ownership.”
“SoftIron and its strong orientation to open source is a great addition to the iRODS ecosystem,” said Jason Coposky, Executive Director of the iRODS Consortium. “Ceph has been gaining traction with both vendors and end-user organizations engaged with iRODS. Welcoming SoftIron, which purpose-builds hardware to optimize every aspect of Ceph, as a member brings immense value to that ecosystem. We look forward to collaborating with SoftIron as we work together to bring added capability, and flexibility to the iRODS community.”
In order to give iRODS users and others in life, bio and pharmaceutical sciences a perspective in using open source Ceph as part of their operational foundation, SoftIron’s Andrew Moloney, VP of Strategy, will be presenting this week during the BioData World Congress. His presentation, titled, “Redefining Software-Defined Storage – All the Performance, Without the Complexity,” will discuss some of the most important drivers of HPC storage growth, the operational challenges in storage infrastructure, and various infrastructural approaches for building software-defined storage architectures. Andrew’s talk will be available at 12.30pm GMT, November 9th, 2020. For more information, or a copy of the talk, please email info@softiron.com.
SoftIron® is the world-leader in task-specific appliances for scale-out data center solutions. Their superior, purpose-built hardware is designed, developed and assembled in California, and they are the only manufacturer to offer auditable provenance. SoftIron’s HyperDrive® software-defined, enterprise storage portfolio runs at wire-speed and is custom-designed to optimize Ceph. HyperSwitch™ is their line of next-generation, top-of-rack switches built to maximize the performance and flexibility of SONiC. HyperCast™ is their high-density, concurrent 4K transcoding solution, for multi-screen, multi-format delivery. SoftIron unlocks greater business value for enterprises by delivering best-in-class products, free from software and hardware lock-in. For more information visit www.SoftIron.com.
The iRODS Consortium is administered by founding member RENCI, a research institute for applications of cyberinfrastructure located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Current members of the iRODS Consortium, in addition to SoftIron, include RENCI, Bayer, the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, DataDirect Networks, Western Digital, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Utrecht University, MSC, University College London, the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing, University of Groningen, SURF, NetApp, Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), Cloudian, Maastricht University, University of Colorado, Boulder, SUSE, Agriculture Victoria, OpenIO, KU Leuven, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, CINES, and four additional anonymous members.
