DataDirect Network Innovates Across Storage Appliances

DataDirect Networks now has a series of performance and reliability innovations across its storage appliances, aimed at meeting the growing demand for storage performance, simplicity, and reliability at scale in a new era of data-centric computing. Infinite Memory Engine and Storage Fusion Architecture product lines now feature new data protection and performance improvements that allow DDN customers to deploy a complete suite of storage services across emerging IoT, deep learning, and technical HPC environments.

The center of gravity in the HPC and technical computing data center has shifted to data. A new generation of innovative storage solutions is needed to deal with new application requirements while taking advantage of new storage media and increased media capacities. DDN’s advances in flash-native caching and advanced data protection across block, file and object storage combine with enterprise-class support for parallel file systems to give users the performance, capacity and control they need to meet these new application requirements.

DDN’s Infinite Memory Engine (IME) – Extreme Scale and Performance in a Small Footprint 

DDN’s IME flash-native data cache uniquely leverages NVMe to accelerate the performance of data-intensive application workflows. When combined with a parallel file system, like DDN’s EXAScaler, IME’s latest release delivers a qualityperformance in the smallest possible footprint. Customers benefit from:

• One-tenth the power consumption and one-tenth to one-three hundredth the space of disk-based parallel file systems with the same peak performance
• Significantly lower cost per peak throughput
• Flash-enabled transactional performance scaling to tens of millions of IOPS
• Ability to scale performance and capacity independently

This magnitude of performance in a small footprint enables simple system designs at performance levels that were simply not possible with drive-based systems. IME accelerates any application that is bottlenecked by traditional storage technologies. Because IME is platform-independent and application-transparent no code modifications are needed.  A solution for both data-intensive, single workflow environments and shared, multi-workflow environments, advancements in the latest release of IME make it an ideal solution for enterprise and deep learning use cases as well as more traditional HPC workflows. New capabilities in DDN’s latest release of IME include:

• Choice of erasure coding options for improved data protection
• Protection against compute node failure
• Adds Ethernet to existing InfiniBand and Omni-Path support
• Improved metadata performance
• Support for the latest processor technologies (i.e. Intel Xeon Phi, Arm, and IBM Power)
• New flash optimizations for full utilization of the latest media designs

Significantly Improved Data Protection Choices Across Block, File and Object Storage
Starting this year, DDN offers improved data protection options across its entire product lines. All DDN product lines now feature advanced erasure coding or de-clustered RAID options that provide unmatched data availability, significantly reduced rebuild time, and orders of magnitude improvements in mean-time-to-data-loss (MTDL). New innovations include an industry-leading erasure coding option for the IME scale-out flash product line that eliminates read-modified-writes, the industry’s widest selection of erasure coding options for object storage with Extended Object Assure (XOA) in WOS, and an overhaul of data protection in DDN’s award winning SFA platform. Specific customer benefits include:

• Industry leading variety of data protection choices
• Significantly reduced rebuild rates of up to 4 minutes per TB for scale-out SSD storage (i.e. IME erasure coding)
• Lower latency random IO
• Unique sequential read and write performance enhancements for block-level de-cluster RAID.

Enterprise Lustre Support
DDN has stepped up support for its EXAScaler Enterprise Lustre distribution to include support for Lustre on ZFS and software-only EXAScaler installations. DDN already supports the largest and most diverse Lustre file system user base in the industry. DDN expertise, feature development, tools, integrations, and robust support make Lustre simpler to deploy, scale, and manage, and more productive in both traditional HPC and high-performance commercial environments. DDN is currently working with the Lustre community on significant, near-term features for performance, availability, and management in its next release.

“DDN is dedicated to advancing technical computing at scale, pushing the limits of the latest technology in every possible way for the benefit of our customers,” says Robert Triendl, SVP for sales, marketing and field services. “With the advent of inexpensive flash devices and the increased focus on data in technical computing and machine learning workflows, storage architectures are undergoing a fundamental transition. The advanced features in our latest product releases constitute a significant step forward – delivering competitive advantage and reduced time to results for our customers as they transition to next generation architectures.”

ISC 2017
DDN’s latest product releases will be on display at the upcoming ISC show in Frankfurt, Germany, June 18-22, 2017. Stop by booth #1010 for a personal demonstration. DDN will host a User Group from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday, June 20, followed by a cocktail reception. A DDN party, co-sponsored by Intel, will be held from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, June 20.

DDN will host an IME and EXAScaler webinar, “Accelerating Lustre with DDN IME,” at 9 a.m. PT on Tuesday, June 27, to provide information about driving performance and reliability in the data-centric era. Register here.

Availability
DDN’s new IME features will be available in Q3 2017. The new SFAOS version will be available in early Q4 2017, and the new EXAScaler Enterprise Lustre Distribution and WOS XOA are available immediately.

Supporting Resources

• More on DDN’s Appointment of Eric Barton as CTO for Software-Defined Storage
• More on ‘Lustre’s Road Ahead’ Webinar Replay
• More on Lustre for Enterprise Computing Blog
• More on DDN IME
• More on SFA14KX
• More on EXAScaler Enterprise Lustre Distribution
• More on DDN End-to-End Storage and Big Data Platforms