SGI to Distribute Panasas

Under a new
distribution and marketing agreement, SGI is extending its data
management offerings with storage solutions from Panasas, Inc., the
leader in parallel clustered storage solutions for the High Performance
Computing (HPC) market.

SGI will offer the Panasas ActiveStor Parallel Storage Clusters to
customers deploying Linux clusters, including award-winning SGI
Altix ICE and Altix XE cluster solutions. Panasas ActiveStor
products augment the SGI) InfiniteStorage line of storage products
and data management solutions for HPC, data-intensive enterprise and
media environments.

Combining HPC clusters with Panasas parallel storage solutions
offers another option for organizations running applications requiring
high- performance parallel I/O. The combined solutions are targeted at
customers in the manufacturing, government, academic and energy
markets. SGI will also provide technical support and installation
services for the Panasas products it sells.

"Because many customers deploying large-scale, multi-node clusters
have unique storage and file system needs, SGI teamed with the company
that leads the market in providing parallel clustered storage solutions
for HPC environments," said Bob Pette, vice president, Global
Professional Services, SGI. "By adding Panasas ActiveStor products to
our vast selection of scalable storage and data management solutions,
SGI is able to provide a complete, highly integrated cluster-based
solution that helps customers shorten their time to insight and make
the most of their SGI cluster."

Panasas ActiveStor parallel storage includes the PanFS parallel
file system. PanFS uses the patented DirectFLOW protocol to provide
a direct access path between cluster nodes and their storage. This
eliminates the delays inherent in traditional storage area network
(SAN) and traditional NFS-based NAS architectures. This approach
improves IT productivity, speeds application performance, shortens time
to insight, and further reduces the overall cost of ownership. Panasas
ActiveStor is specifically optimized for deployment with Linux clusters
with capacity growth requirements.

SGI and Panasas have collaborated on several customer deployments,
including an installation at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where
NASA engineers worked with SGI to integrate a 74.5TB Panasas ActiveStor
parallel storage and PanFS file system within an existing Linux cluster
environment. Compared with a traditional storage solution, the new
Panasas system enables cluster nodes to access data more efficiently.
This has resulted in faster application performance, even as NASA
engineers work with increasingly larger numbers of data files.

"After achieving several successful joint customer deployments with
SGI, it made strategic sense to formalize our relationship via this
distribution and marketing alliance," said Victor Perez, CEO, Panasas.
"Users turn to SGI for performance, scalability, reliability and a deep
understanding of HPC applications, while Panasas storage excels in all
of these areas and will be a perfect complement to SGI Altix servers.
Panasas Parallel Storage clusters are currently deployed at a number of
key SGI commercial and government customer sites. These deployments
have proven to be critical to the success of these customers’
engineering and research efforts."

Panasas, Inc.

SGI