Terascala: Software and Open Framework for Lustre-Based Storage Appliances …

Terascala, Inc. announced LustreStack, a software suite and open framework for speeding the development and deployment of Lustre-based storage appliances on standard hardware based on Intel Xeon processors.

It enables storage providers to deliver high throughput, performance storage appliances to the HPC and Fast Data markets that are easy to install and use, simple to support, and optimally tuned. Currently, LustreStack powers Dell’s Dell | Terascala HPC Storage Solution (DT-HSS) and EMC VNX HPC series solution.

LustreStack provides an open system framework that provides resources for an integration of tools to manage Fast Data infrastructure, applications and workflow. The initial suite incorporates an integrated toolset for break/fix management of all Lustre file system hardware including alerting and notification, complete Lustre file system management, a rich analytics capability for workload and application optimization, and an open, configurable Lustre Appliance Dashboard for appliance health status and diagnostic drill down.

In the coming months, Terascala and its partners will announce additional integrated tools designed to extend and ease Lustre’s adoption into mainstream datacenters and applications.

"LustreStack is the culmination of our seven-plus years of experience developing Lustre tools that are currently in use in some of the world’s most performance-driven environments. Today, industry giants such as Dell and EMC have validated LustreStack as the answer for quickly delivering world-class solutions to the HPC and Fast Data marketplaces," said Steve Butler, CEO of Terascala. "No one questions the performance and scalability of Lustre – it powers 70 of the top 100 supercomputers in the world. With LustreStack, storage providers get an integrated software suite that fully enables a Lustre appliance on their hardware, and an open framework for developers to easily add high-value tools."

Solution Combines Management Tools and Analytics
LustreStack’s management tools with analytics deploy hundreds of software sensors to monitor all aspects of the infrastructure and applications. With LustreStack, organizations gain monitoring and control of their performance environments and gain access to data to tune and optimize the environment through the following capabilities:

• End-to-end break/fix management system with logical and physical views, alerts, notification, browser console, and support assist features
• Single pane of glass management provides dashboard for monitoring, top down system analysis, and drill down from a single, integrated toolset
• Lustre file system management including health status, enhanced failover management, OSS and OST balancing analysis, and metadata management
• Navigation from top-level views to specific hardware and software component details and individual LUN usage in few clicks
• Real-time data collection to provide application-driven tuning
• Data collected over time enables system administrators to understand bandwidth, capacity and client usage to optimize overall system performance, job scheduling and workflow

The LustreStack Appliance Suite
The initial LustreStack appliance suite features integrated tools that together deliver the visibility and control needed to deploy, run, and optimize a Lustre-based environment.

• Lustre Server Manager: Provides automated break/fix management on the entire server and network infrastructure in the Lustre storage appliance, including alerts/notifications on failures, preventative maintenance and failover management.
• Lustre Storage Manager: Provides automated break/fix management on all the storage subsystems including all metadata and object storage hardware and the Lustre file system, providing alerts/notifications on failures, preventative maintenance and failover maintenance.
• Lustre File System Manager: Eliminates the need for any in-house Lustre expertise. Provides GUI and automation to manage and monitor the file system with minimal administration including dynamic health status, rapid diagnostics, and failover management.
• Lustre Appliance Dashboard: Provides a health status dashboard for the appliance, Lustre configurator features, and a granular analytics capability on how all aspects of the Lustre file system are performing as applications execute on it, including I/O patterns, balance profile, bottleneck identification, historical results, and trending in order to diagnose issues and to optimally tune the file system.

LustreStack’s Dashboard is based on industry-standard open software platforms, Nagios and Ganglia, providing developers easy methods to:

• add new data collectors to LustreStack;
• add custom views that correlate data specific to their job-types and workloads;
• add new alert monitors and root cause analysis modules.

Developers within Terascala, at Terascala’s partners, and within the industry will be able to add new high value tools that are integrated to the LustreStack suite.

LustreStack is available. Individual tools can be licensed separately or in bundles.

"Terascala’s LustreStack appliance software enabled us to deploy a Lustre solution with minimal effort that met our performance and capacity needs just hours after the equipment arrived on site," said Jeff McDonald, assistant director of HPC operations at the University of Minnesota. "With Terascala, we gain streamlined and simplified Lustre administration and monitoring along with redundant and robust hardware."

"We are proud to be Terascala’s partner for the last several years and to be part of the launch of LustreStack," said Tim Carroll, director and global lead for Dell, Inc.‘s Research Computing Solutions. "One of Dell’s missions is to make high-performance computing available to all researchers as efficiently and easily as possible. LustreStack is a perfect match with our mission."

"Terascala is building important Lustre enabling technology on top of servers with Intel Xeon processors for the HPC Ecosystem. Terascala’s LustreStack solution provides a platform that simplifies the deployment and management of Lustre appliances which ultimately helps to bring the benefits of HPC to a broader set of commercial users ," commented Mark Seager, CTO, HPC Ecosystems, Intel Corporation.

"Terascala’s LustreStack technology is an integral part of the VNX HPC series solution for the HPC market. It’s widely known that Lustre is the world’s fastest parallel file system, but it can be difficult to deploy and manage," said Jeff Boudreau, VP of EMC Corp.‘s Unified Storage Division. "The combination of VNX HPC series and LustreStack makes Lustre easy to deploy, simple to manage and easy to tune for a wide variety of commercial HPC applications."