Quantum StorNext Software Sets Performance Records for Video Workloads
Testing using SPEC SFS 2014 benchmark outperforms all other file systems across all three SPEC SFS 2014 metrics using 57% fewer storage nodes than nearest competitor
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on March 3, 2021 at 2:22 pmQuantum Corporation said that its StorNext File System is the fastest file system for video workloads.
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In testing using the SPEC SFS 2014 benchmark, the system outperformed all other file systems across all 3 performance metrics, using a reference architecture with 57% fewer storage nodes than the next nearest vendor and at a much lower cost per concurrent stream
These results demonstrate that StorNext provides the best performance and value for any workload that requires massive streaming performance with a large number of concurrent users or processes. Use cases in M&E, video surveillance capture and retention, and earth and life sciences with large digital image files can benefit from the streaming performance and data lifecycle management of the StorNext system.
The SPEC SFS 2014 SP2 Video Data Application (VDA) test, which is designed to simulate a high-performance video-based workload at scale, was conducted on the StorNext File System and F-Series NVMe storage servers.
The StorNext system set performance records for:
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Highest aggregate throughput (34,391MB/s)
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Lowest latency (0.9 milliseconds overall response time)
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Highest number of concurrent streams (7,450 streams).
The charts below show how the company outperformed its competitors across the 3 metrics.
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“Video creation is growing exponentially across all industries – whether for entertainment, marketing, communications, training or surveillance – and customers require extremely high-performance storage systems to ingest and process their video content,” said Brian Pawlowski, chief development officer. “These test results clearly demonstrate that StorNext is the fastest file system on the planet for video workloads. And thanks to the architecture of the StorNext File System, it achieved these record-breaking results with substantially less hardware than the nearest competitor.“
“The record-setting results in this SPEC SFS testing validate the StorNext system’s performance leadership for video and other large file workloads,” said Eric Burgener, research VP, infrastructure systems, platforms and technologies group, IDC. “And since explosive growth of this type of data is occurring across many industries, StorNext is well positioned to help enterprises ingest, process, and manage this type of data across its lifecycle.”
The reference architecture uses available products, configured as a single StorNext 7 File System running on firm’s Xcellis appliances, with 10 F-Series NVMe storage servers. The StorNext File System was connected to clients via iSER (iSCSI Extensions for RDMA) over a 100GbE dual network, with an additional 1GbE network for metadata and administration. Setails of the architecture used are publicly available on the SPEC website.
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) is a non-profit corporation formed to establish, maintain and endorse standardized benchmarks and tools to evaluate performance and energy efficiency for the newest gen of computing systems. it develops benchmark suites and also reviews and publishes submitted results from its member organizations and other benchmark licensees.
Resources:
SPEC SFS2014_vda test results for StorNext
All published SPEC SFS2014_vda test results
Comments
Quantum entered into a new era since CEO Jamie Lerner joined the company a few years ago. His mission was gigantic when you see below the revenue trajectory of the company for several years under Rick Belluzo and Jon Gacek leaderships.
Remember some tragic news about restatement that have impacted users confidence into the company. To solve that, the board made some drastic decisions to recruit key senior executives with track record. Some past practices have to disappear and it seems to be the case since Lerner took the company leadership. He distilled some clear ideas with ambitious goals to re-establish the company as a trusted partner for its installed base but also beyond that with new data challenges to address and solve at scale.
The company has started to change the curve of this trajectory with a new spirit around products, acquisitions and people. 3FQ21 results see a sequential progress of 14% inviting us to think about a rebound of the revenue. Quantum is again listed on Nasdaq, its value being a bit erratic for some quarters but with a global growth, and started some public offering program for $90 million of common stock.
At the same time, partners have proven their investment in Quantum's business supporting this evolution. All good indicators that must be confirmed in the next few quarters.
Leader in secondary storage with revenue driven by DXi, Scalar and StorNext in that order, the company continues to shake its product line with some key acquisitions. The management team understood that the new Quantum must deliver new iterations and new products coming from external moves. This has demonstrated its value as external growth is a cultural aspect at Quantum. Remember MountainGate for CentraVision file system or CVFS, it became StorNext, DXi developed with technology acquired from RockSoft, ADIC. The table below summarizes all these.
The two recent ones have added significant value to its portfolio adding both a secondary storage product - ActiveScale acquired from Western Digital distributed in the past under the name Lattus - and a new primary file storage one with ATFS for All Terrain File System coming from the acquisition early this year of Atavium. These moves represent also some axis towards a global multi-cloud momentum the company has initiated at different products stages.
Quantum also recognizes that storage will evolve and one direction could be DNA storage. Thus it joined recently the DNA Data Storage Alliance where you can find Twist Bioscience, Microsoft, Western Digital and Illumina as founding members.
The management team also consolidates its leaders layer with top executives coming from these acquisitions but also more recently with Brian Pawlowski as chief development officer, coming from DriveScale, Pure Storage, NetApp and before thaet Sun Microsystems. These moves, arrivals and acquisitions confirm that Quantum is again attractive both from a team and people perspective but also in term of products.
ATFS illustrates the desire for the product team to play an active role in primary storage, we need also to mention the F-Series, a full flash NVMe-based array, ActiveScale, a well respected object storage product and of course DXi, Scalar and StorNext.
As mentioned with the press release above, the firm participated recently to a benchmark campaign around the official SPEC SFS 2014 and they published results for the vda - video data application - with the top results in the 3 categories: number of streams, overall response time and throughput. All these top results show capabilities of parallel file system from various vendors. These results illustrate what specialists know about StorNext, it is the preferred solution in the M&E market established, deployed and famous for many years. At the same time, the product is often limited to this segment but its strong characteristics invite it for other use cases. Also video generation exists beyond this segment and is present in various industries now.
A few remarks on the image used and produced by Quantum to illustrate results in the press release at the top of this page. WekaIO arrives second but this segment is not addressed according to their web site with solutions for AI/ML, life sciences, financial services and high performance data analytics. WekaIO results, second in the vda category are also impressive and demonstrate the capability of its parallel file system, one of the best on the planet. Third place is for DDN with ExaScaler and fourth is Datacom and not Dataom as it is displayed in the original press release from Quantum. Datatom is a Chinese company based in Chengdu, that develops a storage solution named Infinity based on Ceph.
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