lolo

lolo is a file-based storage service for research computing customers at UW.  Offered through UW-IT, it was developed in collaboration with the eScience Institute to provide external storage for the Hyak cluster as well as addressing the growing storage needs of researchers campus wide. Two classes of storage are avaiable:

• Collaboration Filesystem: a general purpose file-storage service
• Archive Filesystem: a file service for safe, long-term storage of data that changes infrequently, if ever

lolo is one element in a collection of centrally managed services supporting research computing at UW. In addition to lolo, this cyberinfrastructure plan includes the Hyak scalable cluster computer and a high-speed networking hub connecting lolo, Hyak, campus, and the research Internet, including commercial cloud providers. 

The collaboration file service is appropriate for sharing data with colleagues on and off campus. It is equipped with 10Gbs connections to the campus backbone, Hyak, and external networks, ensuring useful file transfer speeds for large data sets. Data is stored in redundant disk arrays and accessed via a redundant pool of servers. The system is designed to support backups if the demand arises, but backups are not provided today. Initial capacity is 48TB, but the system is designed to expand easily to accommodate a petabyte or more.

The archive service is intended as a repository for data that you may rarely access but that you want to ensure is safe and available over the long term. In many labs, data more than a year or so old tends to be accessed rarely. This service provides an alternative to supporting ever more disk capacity to keep all this old data online. It is not intended for any sort of interactive or general purpose file storage. Users write files to disk as they would with any other network filesystem. Within a day all files are automatically transferred from disk to tape in a primary campus datacenter. A second tape copy is created in another campus datacenter within an additional day or two. Recall of files is automatic and accomplished by simply opening and reading the file. Initial capacity is 640TB, but can easily expand to several petabytes.

The protocol for data access will vary, depending on user location:

lolo services are intended as alternatives to having to deploy and manage your own storage systems. As such, the risk model is similar. Capacity must be purchased in 8TB increments for periods of three years. The initial rates are projected to be $1.44/GB/year for disk and $0.17/GB/year for tape. Customers will be billed monthly. We anticipate these rates dropping substantially over time as capacity grows. Rates will be adjusted annually. 

A service description for lolo appears in the UW-IT Service Catalog. For assistance in understanding how lolo can help in your lab or department, please contact info [at] escience [dot] washington [dot] edu.

The Name

lolo is a word in Chinook Jargon, meaning “the whole thing” and “to carry”, depending on the application of accents. Written in lower case, lolo also represents a binary string (decimal 10). 

Chinook Jargon is the trade language of the Pacific Northwest, incorporating terms from Chinook and Chehalis and other local languages, as well as French and English. We’ve chosen words from Chinook Jargon for the names of systems in the UW research cyberinfrastructure to emphasize their role in supporting the broad range of UW research users and our ties to our place between the mountains and ocean.