NAB 2016: Panasas Intros DirectFlow for Mac

Panasas (#SL11127), a provider of performance scale-out network-attached storage (NAS), has announced DirectFlow for Mac. Previously only available for Linux, DirectFlow for Mac brings the performance benefits of parallel I/O over Ethernet to the Apple Mac platform and Apple OS X operating system.

DirectFlow is the parallel data access protocol designed by Panasas and delivered as part of the integrated ActiveStor storage solution that incorporates the patented PanFS file system as well as NFS and SMB protocols. Currently deployed across a large variety of Linux-based computing environments, the DirectFlow protocol has proven success at delivering more than 10x the performance of workloads using traditional I/O protocols.

DirectFlow avoids traditional protocol I/O bottlenecks by allowing compute clients to access Panasas storage directly and in parallel. This results in higher performance than what can be achieved with industry standard protocols such as NFS and SMB. Using DirectFlow, Panasas customers have re-rendered entire movies in record time, reduced the cost of sequencing a human genome, and designed breakthrough products by running twice as many engineering simulations more quickly than ever before.

DirectFlow for Mac delivers breakthrough performance to all commercial markets serviced by the Apple Mac platform, including media and entertainment, life sciences and education. With DirectFlow for Mac, production teams are able to ingest, process and deliver video in higher resolution, and consolidate their workflows under a single global namespace – all while working alongside DirectFlow for Linux clients and other platforms using traditional file protocols. In addition, users have access to the latest Panasas data-protection techniques based on modern erasure-coding methods, which deliver triple parity protection for reliability that scales with capacity.

“With the introduction of DirectFlow for Mac, the strong ecosystem of Apple production applications can now tap the parallel performance benefits of DirectFlow over Ethernet for the first time,” said David Sallak, vice president, products and solutions at Panasas. “When you double the performance of client applications accessing scale-out NAS you double the productivity of all users. This leads to higher quality outcomes because you have more time to perfect the product you are creating, while also reducing the cost of getting the job done.”

Panasas will demonstrate DirectFlow for Mac optimized for video editing workflows with Adobe Premiere Pro CC software in Panasas booth #SL11127.