Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, on Wednesday said that its cloud storage system has passed the performance test of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is the world's largest particle physics laboratory. The CERN data centre, also known as the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) Tier-0, is at the core of a global computing resource which enables the storage and analysis of more than 20 PB of Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data per year.

CERN openlab was created to develop innovative and advanced IT systems to be used by the LHC community through bringing together the efforts of science and industry. The scalability of the storage system is important for CERN as the laboratory faces the ever increasing demands of its physics users. The massive data growth prompts CERN to evaluate new storage technologies. Huawei, with industry-leading storage experts and a significant technical experience, is committed to the development of innovative storage solutions in the field of next-generation cloud storage. By joining CERN openlab as a contributing member, Huawei focuses on investigating the applicability of new storage techniques and architectures to the processing of high energy physics data from the LHC experiments.

In early 2012, Huawei’s cloud storage system was delivered to the CERN site, and in three months, the installation and benchmark performance evaluation were completed. Huawei’s cloud storage proved to show excellent data writing and reading performance in large-scale data environments, with horizontal scalability. The system also provides a self-healing intelligent maintenance, which significantly reduces maintenance costs, and effectively enhances the storage system’s availability and reliability. The test validation results demonstrate this innovative hardware and software architecture complies with the mass storage requirements.

"CERN is hitting the technology limits for resource-intensive simulations and analysis. Our collaboration with Huawei shows an exciting new approach, where their novel architecture extends the capabilities in preparation for the Exascale data rates and volumes we expect in the future." said Bob Jones, head of CERN openlab.

"Establishing the link with CERN openlab gave us a fantastic opportunity to further develop our cloud storage products, and proved their worth in the extreme scientific research and mass data environment." James Hughes, Chief Architect of Cloud Storage, Huawei stated.