Seagate ClusterStor Engineered Solution …

Seagate Technology plc announced the next generation of its ClusterStor Engineered Solution for Lustre, offering up to 700% metadata performance improvements. 

The benefits of this new solution begin with improved metadata performance and scalability by implementing the Distributed Namespace (DNE) features in the Lustre 2.5 parallel file system. 

In addition to the Base Metadata Management Server capability, ClusterStor customers will have the option to add up to sixteen Lustre Distributed Namespace metadata servers per single file system, providing client metadata performance improvement of up to 700% and expanded scalability support for up to 16 billion files per file system. 

This ClusterStor Engineered Solution for Lustre is an engineered solution integrating all aspects of hardware, software and Lustre support for the latest 2.5 version of the Lustre parallel file system. 

It adds new features to the Lustre parallel storage file system used in HPC environments, scaling from small workgroup clusters to large-scale computing clusters requiring storage support of up to 1TB/s performance and up to 100s of petabyte storage capacity from a single file system. Updated features include scalability advancements to support larger computing clusters, improved security capabilities including government security compliance and ease of deployment for upcoming Lustre releases. 

“We’re excited to implement Seagate’s latest version of the ClusterStor Engineered Solution for Lustre as part of our Cray Sonexion 2000 offering. We believe this will build upon and expand our already successful and productive partnership,” said Barry C. Bolding, VP, marketing and business development, Cray Inc. “The emphasis Seagate is placing on HPC solutions means continued innovation for customers requiring data intensive computing and provides a solid framework for Cray’s Lustre parallel file system storage offering.” 

Supporting a new HSM framework, ClusterStor OEM, reseller partners and end users will be able to create and manage multi-tier disk-to-disk and disk-to-tape data migration solutions, which aid in reducing capital and operating expenditures, associated with prior labor-intensive data management procedure. By leveraging ClusterStor solution, partners will benefit through reduced investment risk, integration and support costs associated with new, major releases of the Lustre file system. 

“Engineered for high-performance computing, Seagate’s HPC solution combines high-density storage enclosures, the OS, hardware controllers, and the Lustre file system in a consolidated, scale-out high performance-computing storage platform. The award-winning Seagate HPC solution removes the complexities associated with deploying and maintaining traditional high-performance systems yielding faster time to results, ease of use, and world-class performance to meet mission-critical needs,” said Ken Claffey, VP of ClusterStor, Seagate cloud systems and solutions. “The increased scalability, ease-of-management and improvements to Seagate ClusterStor Engineered Solutions for Lustre will be welcomed by our OEM partners and end users. We look forward to sharing these advancements with Seagate’s partners as well as our public and private sector communities during the Super Computing (SC14) conference in New Orleans.” 

ClusterStor Secure Data Appliance Available
Seagate also announced the availability of the ClusterStor Secure Data Appliance (SDA). It is also announcing the ClusterStor SDA now includes Kerberos network authentication protocol as a foundation to enable symmetric-key cryptography. This provides the file system framework to enable encryption key management solutions based upon Kerberos to encrypt network data traffic between the compute client and storage system, ensuring an incremental level of security against insider threats. 

Specific attributes of SDA with Kerberos enablement include: 

• ICD 503 Multi Level Security for Geospatial Imagery Data Capture and analytics 
• Performance capability to capture and analyze large image file sizes providing faster time to results with increased decision support accuracy. 
• Framework to enable customized compute client to disk encryption and key management solutions 

ClusterStor SDA is a compliant and secure scale-out parallel file system solution, providing the means to implement all the necessary Mandatory Access Control (MAC), explicit audit logging / tracking, encryption and support capabilities to enforce ‘least privilege’ access control. 

ClusterStor SDA meets US government Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 503 policies and related Director of Central Intelligence Directives (DCID 6/3 PL4) cross domain solution requirements. 

Seagate was exhibiting at SC14, November 16-21 in New Orleans, LA during which it was demonstrating the next generation of ClusterStor Engineered Solutions for Lustre.

ClusterStor Engineered Solution for Lustre is available.

ClusterStor SDA with Kerberos enablement is scheduled to be available in December 2014.