Xyratex ClusterStor 3000: Lustre Storage System for HPC

Xyratex Ltd announced the ClusterStor 3000, a Lustre storage solution for HPC users. The ClusterStor 3000 will be available exclusively through OEMs in the fourth quarter of this year.

                  ClusterStor Architecture

Xyratex has developed the ClusterStor 3000 by leveraging its expertise in clustered file systems, enterprise class integrated application platforms and high availability storage subsystem design. The ClusterStor 3000 is a rack-scale Lustre storage solution engineered for HPC environments that includes Scalable Storage Units (SSUs) with capacity density and bandwidth. It occupies half the footprint while delivering more than twice the end-to-end bandwidth of traditional solutions. ClusterStor’s scale-out storage architecture enables configurations from terabytes to tens of petabytes and from 2.5 gigabytes per second to 1 terabyte per second of actual file system throughput.

The ClusterStor 3000 architecture delivers three interrelated benefits to the HPC environment:

• linear performance scalability,
• ease of installation and management, and
• enhanced storage system reliability at scale.

Key to the ClusterStor 3000’s performance is its scale-out storage architecture that starts with the consolidation of Lustre servers, RAID controllers and disk enclosures – which are delivered as three separate components in traditional systems – into a single scalable storage unit (SSU) appliance. The SSU is the new Lustre file system building block that has been balanced to deliver linear performance and capacity scalability as requirements increase. As performance or capacity needs change, users can add incremental SSUs to the storage cluster and begin leveraging the increased performance and capacity immediately.

"The University of Cambridge is a very experienced Lustre user and we have found the ClusterStor 3000 to be one of the easiest Lustre storage solutions to install, configure and manage," said Paul Calleja, Director of High Performance Computing at the University of Cambridge, a ClusterStor 3000 beta site. "Xyratex incorporates all of the key component technologies required for a Lustre storage solution into an integrated, modular, high density form factor. With Lustre and a comprehensive storage management framework integrated into the ClusterStor 3000, we can easily configure and manage our cluster. This will save us a significant amount of time as we deploy new HPC systems."

ClusterStor Manager provides a single administration interface to provision, configure and monitor the storage cluster. ClusterStor Manager’s distributed, integrated architecture provides a class of management ease that has not been seen before in Lustre administration. The linear scaling approach, coupled with simplified management, will enable users to begin leveraging their Lustre storage cluster in a fraction of the time of a traditional solution.

"We’ve been using the ClusterStor 3000 for nearly 5 months without any issue," said Charlie Taylor, Associate Director of the University of Florida’s High Performance Computing Center, another ClusterStor 3000 beta site. "Research requiring high performance computing varies across a wide array of disciplines here at the University, including physics, biology, chemistry, and statistics. We have relied on Lustre to provide a scalable file system for our computing needs for several years. With ClusterStor, we were able to bring up our Lustre environment in less than 4 hours and saw a significant performance benefit for our most demanding computational problems right away. With our traditional Lustre storage we had to tweak the system for weeks to obtain a fraction of the performance we have in ClusterStor 3000."

"Lustre is recognized as a leading high performance clustered file system in the High Performance Computing space with over 70% share of the Top 100 systems in the Top 500," said Earl Joseph, Program Vice President at IDC for High Performance Computing. "Xyratex has developed an integrated solution that addresses the primary pain points HPC users face when implementing a Lustre storage solution, including: scaling performance in a linear fashion; assembling and testing new systems, and ease-of-managing the entire solution from a single management platform will help to allow users to alleviate the pain associated with performance tuning, installation configuration and ongoing management."

Over the last two years, Xyratex has worked with the HPC community to develop an understanding of the data storage needs and requirements. Lustre is a key part of the company’s strategy for HPC. Xyratex is committed to working with the Lustre community in order to continue the development and support of Lustre. With Xyratex’s Lustre development team, together with its contributions to the Lustre community’s roadmap for Lustre 2.1, Xyratex is demonstrating its dedication to ensuring that Lustre continues to evolve to meet the needs of HPC users.

"Xyratex is excited to enter the HPC market with a fully integrated solution that will enable our OEM partners to leverage our next generation of HPC storage solutions," said Steve Barber, CEO of Xyratex. "We’ve invested significant resources to develop the ClusterStor solution and we’re confident that the new levels of performance and density that we’ve achieved are unprecedented and will establish ClusterStor as the future of HPC data storage. Xyratex is known for enterprise storage expertise, the ability to develop and bring to market innovative new storage technologies and for producing the highest quality storage products. These characteristics, coupled with our deep Lustre file system expertise, will be significant differentiators for us in the HPC environment."