Quobyte's High-Performance Storage System Advances Cryo-EM Research at Oregon Health & Science University

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Jul 25, 2023, 09:00 ET

Dr. Yoshioka employs Quobyte's technology to address the large data storage needs of cryo-EM research, enhancing performance, capacity and outcomes.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 25, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Quobyte Inc., a top-tier provider of versatile software-defined storage solutions, proudly revealed today that Dr. Craig Yoshioka, Director of one of the three national cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) centers funded by the National Institutes of Health and Research Associate Professor at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), has successfully implemented Quobyte's high-capacity, high-performance storage technology. This innovative technology advances cryo-EM research by addressing its massive data storage needs.

Cryo-EM, a pioneering technology that enables detailed study of cells, viruses, and protein assemblies, produces an average of 8 to 16 terabytes of data daily at the OHSU Center. Managing and accessing such an enormous quantity of data necessitates a robust and resilient storage solution.

Dr. Yoshioka remarked, "Given the large datasets we handle, stemming from numerous daily experiments, we need a storage system that offers both extensive capacity and superior performance. These requirements are often difficult to satisfy simultaneously."

The OHSU Center, which services about 900 researchers and oversees over 200 active projects, was previously reliant on a system that, while capable of large data storage, struggled with real-time processing and was prone to systemic slowdowns. Therefore, it was crucial to increase both processing power and storage closer to the microscopes to boost performance and capacity.

After careful consideration of several options, Quobyte emerged as the optimal parallel storage solution. Working with leading integrator Advanced HPC, the transition to Quobyte was completed within months, facilitating more consistent performance for the Center. Dr. Yoshioka affirmed, "Quobyte has met all my performance expectations."

Bjorn Kolbeck, CEO of Quobyte, stated, "Our scalable solutions empower the OHSU team to focus on their research instead of data management. Our commitment to delivering advanced solutions for high-demand environments is confirmed by the positive feedback from Dr. Yoshioka."

The application of Quobyte has considerably impacted the cryo-EM research process. The storage system can maintain high performance even under extreme loads, guaranteeing uninterrupted real-time data processing. Moreover, its distributed file system effectively eliminates single points of failure, allowing for smoother data-related workflows.

In the future, Dr. Yoshioka intends to leverage Quobyte for transferring large datasets over the internet. Its compatibility with Amazon S3 and its capacity to provide granular access controls make it an exciting prospect for cloud environments.

Dr. Yoshioka concluded, "Quobyte is the cornerstone for data storage across our facility. Now, researchers can dedicate more energy to unraveling the mysteries of life at a molecular level instead of dealing with data storage issues."

Boosting Efficiency for Data Transmission and Processing
In the old set up the electron microscopes transmit data at a rate of 10GbE to a NAS system that exclusively consists of HDDs. On the other end, the processing components such as the CPU and GPU establish bi-directional communication with the NAS system at the same 10GbE speed, but only one component at a time. This sequential communication created significant bottlenecks and throttled overall efficiency.

Now with a Quobyte cluster consisting of N servers, the electron microscopes can still transmit data at 10GbE, but now they can do so to each individual server. On the processing side, each processing unit has the capability to transfer data with the Quobyte cluster at speeds of up to 100GbE, enabling bidirectional communication and granting each processing unit simultaneous access to every server. Furthermore, the Quobyte cluster facilitates the utilization of both HDDs and SSDs, combining them for optimal performance.

For additional information about Quobyte's hardware-agnostic, deploy-anywhere software and its Free Edition for use in data centers with a 150TB capacity, please visit https://www.quobyte.com/.

About Quobyte

Founded in 2013 by former Google employees and high-performance computing experts, Quobyte is dedicated to bringing HPC scale-out and hyperscaler operations to the enterprise. Backed by over a decade of research, Quobyte's next-generation parallel file system core serves low-latency and high-throughput workloads within a single system. Quobyte offers enterprise IT the benefits of modern storage for generation scale-out with unlimited performance, automatic transparent failover, and non-disruptive updates. Please visit www.quobyte.com for more information.

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