DDN Collaborates With Intel

DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN) announced the latest generation of EXAScaler, the company’s Lustre appliance, with support from DDN and Intel Corp.

In a single 45 unit rack, the new EXAScaler delivers over 4.8PB of usable storage using 6TB disk drives, 100MB/s sustained scalable per-drive performance, up to 40GB/s sustained throughput and up to 1.5 million IO/s.

The latest version of the EXAScaler appliance offers high sustained Lustre metadata performance, capable of exceeding 100,000 file creates per second, even when creating millions of files under intensive load.

To meet the large-scale storage and analytics needs of Enterprise and HPC environments, users require the mixed I/O performance and concurrent client access of a parallel file system in combination with storage, backed by 24×7 enterprise-grade support.

The ability to scale to tens of thousands of clients and petabytes of storage with DDN’s optimized Lustre v2.5 client and support for dual-rail IB makes the EXAScaler appliance attractive to academic and scientific research organizations, as well as enterprises that are scaling at HPC levels such as those in oil and gas, financial services and manufacturing industries.

DDN’s Lustre expertise and decade-long support for the world’s largest file storage systems, coupled with the company’s long-standing relationship with Intel, makes DDN a standard for Lustre-based environments.

Powered by Intel Enterprise Edition for Lustre software, EXAScaler integrates file system and storage media into one file storage appliance to provide higher throughput and parallel access that traditional enterprise SAN and NAS storage technologies. Designed for businesses with large scale, high-bandwidth storage needs, the EXAScaler appliance allows users to tap into the power and scalability of Lustre, but with simplified installation, configuration and monitoring features to slash Lustre deployment time from weeks to hours – even for petascale systems.

Built on DDN’s Storage Fusion Architecture (SFA), EXAScaler includes enhancements to help customers simplify the deployment of HA configurations including improved drive rebuild times, self-encrypting drive (SED) support, online drive firmware features, and enhanced remote diagnostics tools that provide reliability, availability and serviceability.

Integration and interoperability with DDN’s SFA12KX and SFA7700X storage solutions, makes EXAScaler the solution for customers looking for the HPC performance of parallel file systems without the management overhead and complexity of building their own. The appliance is managed with the DirectMon management GUI that offers centralized configuration, monitoring and management functionality across the entire DDN product portfolio.

EXAScaler appliance powered by Intel offers performance and reliability,
integration of Lustre with Apache Hadoop, and 24×7 support from DDN
The latest version of EXAScaler integrates DDN SFA storage appliances with a new custom-optimized version of the Lustre file system, based on the Intel EE for Lustre software, and incorporating enhancements to Lustre stability, reliability, and performance.

The appliance provides large-scale MPI users with performance enhancements including parallel I/O throughput across thousands of clients, servers, and storage devices. Additionally, EXAScaler improves single client throughput as well as metadata and small file I/O performance, to accelerate time-to-insight in data analytics environments, such as life sciences, energy exploration and image analysis.

Offering integration with industry distributions of Hadoop software from Apache Software Foundation and Cloudera, Inc., EXAScaler uses an adapter which allows users to run MapReduce applications on top of Lustre software. This allows the appliance to accelerate the rate which data can be accessed and analyzed, optimizing the performance of MapReduce operations and delivering faster, more scalable, and easier-to-manage storage.

Testing by the open source Lustre community and by EXAScaler product development teams also provides customers the confidence of a stable software platform that has been proven across diverse industries.

Optimized to accelerate file systems, massive performance at low TCO
With the new EXAScaler appliance, customers can choose between turnkey or customized storage solutions that meet the needs for simplified Lustre file system management and performance acceleration within enterprise big data environments.

While parallel file systems are a natural fit for streaming and large file access, typically they prove less effective with small file performance. To address this gap, DDN combines EXAScaler with Storage Fusion Xcelerator (SFX) flash caching technology to improve small I/O read operations from large data files, as well as small file read throughput.

Availability and specification details
The latest version of EXAScaler is available, offered with customizable optimization capabilities to ensure high capacity storage in a rack coupled with the small I/O, mixed I/O and throughput available for a Lustre-based appliance. Additionally, customers can select from new pre-installed, rack-optimized configurations optimized for performance or capacity.

Michael Vildibill, VP product management, DDN, said: “The performance demands of today’s data-intensive applications require a new approach to HPC storage that balances the storage and data throughput challenges with the ability to accelerate value from customers’ workflows. DDN’s EXAScaler appliance powered by the pairing of DDN performance and solution experience with Intel IEEL is a next generation storage system that fills this gap. A massively scalable, efficient appliance designed for the HPC and big data markets, EXAScaler delivers extreme file system performance to help simplify and reduce the cost of building petascale computing solutions for data hungry applications across sectors including scientific research, trading simulation, climate modeling and energy exploration.“

Brent Gorda, GM, high performance data division, Intel, said: “Working with DDN, we have architected an innovative solution that overcomes many of the data-intensive challenges facing customers in both HPC and big data. Coupling DDN’s leading hardware with our version of the Intel EE for Lustre software will provide customers with an elegant, efficient and powerful solution to solve many of storage and movement challenges.“