The University of Utah’s Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC) is located in Salt Lake City, where it serves as the university hub for research computing. CHPC’s mission is to support the growing and increasingly diverse computational needs of scientists across disciplines and research groups.
It was hard to find a backup solution that was cheaper than our primary disk storage. The majority of our data — around 30 petabytes — was flapping in the breeze. Now, I sleep easier at night knowing that our data is backed up in a Spectra Logic tape library. Tape is having a major resurgence — it will continue to become more prevalent in the future.
The Challenge
The University of Utah’s Center for High-Performance Computing (CHPC) faced a critical vulnerability: 30+ petabytes of research data lacked a reliable archive. Budget constraints made it difficult to justify a secondary storage system. Past disk-based hardware failures underscored the need for a more resilient, affordable solution.
The Solution
CHPC implemented a cost-effective tape-based backup solution featuring the Spectra Cube™ tape library. This approach ensured geographic redundancy and compliance with the industry-standard 3-2-1-1-0 backup protocol, securing archival data against threats and offering a less expensive archive storage tier to users.
The Result
CHPC reduced backup storage costs to just $7/terabyte and slashed power consumption. CHPC can now follow data protection best practices, easily comply with long-term retention requirements, and ensure scientific data is safeguarded for decades. Most importantly, Spectra gave their storage team peace of mind.
Environment Snapshot
- The Spectra Cube tape library
- BlackPearl Nearline Object Gateway
- OSW-2400 Optical SAS Switch
- 8 x LTO-9 SAS tape drives
- RCLONE software
