Brazil’s Federal Government has promised that scientific data generated within the nation must be stored in Brazil. A collaboration with Japan is helping to make this happen.

The National Research Network (RNP) of Brazil has partnered with the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) to create a shared data center in Manaus, which will store scientific data collected by the Forest Museum project.

Network for trees

The initiative is being put together with Kyoto University, using finance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA-Brazil). The shared data center will be run by the RNP, which expects an average demand of 1 Tbyte per month.

With this in place, Brazil now has a dedicated network infrastructure, along with data processing and storage, for the academic community. It will be disseminate knowledge and help develop collaborative research, providing a large database for researchers in Brazil and abroad.

The partnership with the University of Kyoto will allow Brazil’s national research network to demonstrate the importance of secure storage for international projects, and the feasibility of sharing data from any region of the country .

“The shared data center is an essential component in the Brazilian academic community’s IT infrastructure, increasing the interaction between research institutions, promoting the exchange of knowledge, facilitating the analysis of documents, and speeding up information processing and tool development,” said José Luiz Ribeiro Filho, director of solutions and services at the National Education and Research Network.

Manaus shared data center

The shared data center (CDC) is the first initiative of the Interministerial Program RNP (PI-RNP), formed by the several ministries including Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications (MCTIC), Education (MEC), Health, Culture and Defense, to invest in a computing cloud service for the education and research community in the country. Hosted by INPA, this is the largest data center in the North of Brazil, and the fifth largest in the country.

For its implementation in 2015, the RNP used IDS1000 containers, donated by Huawei.

The data center will give international visibility to the scientific project and ensure the integrity of data collected.

The results of the data center project will contribute to the definition of public policies and the establishment of goals and guidelines for future provision of cloud computing services for the education and research community.

The data center infrastructure consists of a power container (UPS and generator) and another container with 10 IT racks. Each of them is 40 feet (12m) long. The direct expansion (DX) cooling system is pre-defined by Huawei for containers.

The precision cooling, UPS, generators, fire detection and prevention are all monitored locally and remotely.

As well as monitoring all supporting infrastructure, the system monitors the status of doors, motion sensors, video cameras, and especially the use of IT equipment.

The center is connected by optical fiber with two links to the Manaus metropolitan ring network Manaus, built by RNP in partnership with the Amazonas State Government and operated by the data processing company Prodam. Internally, the center uses both fiber optic and Cat 6A copper cabling.

RNP expects the center to give international visibility to the scientific project and ensure the integrity of data collected.

Other partnerships

RNP has several partnerships with international institutions. The Telemedicine University Network (Ruth) links teaching hospitals and health units throughout the country with a high-performance infrastructure.

The organization also coordinates projects with the European Union to strengthen collaboration between the two tech research communities.

RNP, along with the MCTIC and the European Commission, has managed projects involving national and international academic institutions in cloud computing, including security aspects, high-performance processing and experimental platforms. Middleware also figures in a project for collaborative applications and the virtual global community.

This feature appeared on DatcenterDynamics.es. Translation by Peter Judge