"It is a wonderful opportunity to team with IBM in implementing leading-edge technology," said Michael Cusanovich, director of ARL and professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics.

Researchers from IBM and the University of Arizona will collaborate to build a massive storage environment for large volumes of diverse types of life sciences data, including MRI images, genomic sequences and microscopy images.

The project has capabilities to scale to petabytes of data and will help the university manage, integrate and access their current repository of digital assets as well as organize and convert non-digitized assets to a digital format. IBM TotalStorage disk and tape systems will allow data to be managed throughout its lifecycle in different tiers of storage.

At its core, the grant will enable the development of a data life cycle management system that allows researchers to have data storage provisioned autonomically as it is needed, in a non-disruptive manner transparent to users and applications.

"This solution will permit growth while there is work in progress, a crucial component when you have hundreds of users utilizing a centralized system," said Nirav Merchant, director of information technology for ARL.

The UA will also be able to use this infrastructure to transfer data that researchers access at much higher rates from remote sites, and aid data management by migrating infrequently used files to economical storage locations while retrieving it on demand without any user intervention.

This provides researchers with the scaleable framework needed to compete for data-intensive grants, such as the newer, team science-based opportun
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Contact: Nirav Merchant
nirav@arl.arizona.edu
520-621-8379
University of Arizona
25-Jan-2005