Scientific Computing Services completed the first phase of its High Performance Storage System (HPSS) software upgrade. HPSS was upgraded from 7.3.3.p8 to 7.3.3.p9a, the DB2 database from 9.5.9 to 9.7.8, and RHEL from 5.8 to 5.9. These intermediate software versions provide important stepping stones for the testing and deployment of the production versions in a few weeks. When finalized, this upgrade will deliver functional and stability enhancements for this critical HPSS service which houses several petabytes of SLAC scientific data.
Scientific Computing Services met with representatives from Dell to discuss upcoming enhancements to their disk storage line. We will consider using the newly announced MD3460 disk array in place of the MD3260 in future storage purchases to provide higher performance for science experiments.