Lustre Scores Business Class Upgrade with HSM

By Nicole Hemsoth

November 6, 2013

OpenSFS, the Intel-backed sponsors of the main community version of Lustre, announced the latest release of the file system, which comes with a number of features designed to push Lustre further past the halls of HPC and into a much more diverse pool of potential users.

During a conversation about this update with Galen Shipman, Chairman at OpenSFS, we discussed how the 2.5 release of the Lustre file system is taking the requests and requirements of a growing set of potential enterprise Lustre users to heart. Among the key feature sweeps with this release are the addition of hierarchical storage management (HSM) capabilities, which directly addresses demands from the commercial community.

Shipman says that Lustre has finally hit a point in its technical maturity, resiliency and manageability where users outside of HPC are able to consider it as an option to support their growing data-heavy infrastructure. “Enterprise and traditional HPC are being confronted with many of the same data challenges that used to be limited to HPC sites,” he says. “It’s those forces—one being increasing data volume and the need to be able to process those volumes in a short amount of time using scalable algorithms (running on Hadoop or in MPI environments, for example) but that is mature and easy enough to use that it can be managed outside of that small cadre of HPC experts that most companies don’t have access to.”

He points to his work at Oak Ridge National Lab (his other role is directing ORNL’s compute and data environment for scientific projects) as an excellent example of this shift. Although it’s certainly an HPC-oriented center, Shipman says the team there is now using Lustre where they would have traditionally gone with scale-out NFS in support of workloads that look a lot more like “big data” enterprise workloads than HPC. The fact that it’s now much easier to manage, he says, is one of the keys, not to mention its reliability for their purposes.

Shipman says they’re using Lustre on these enterprise-like workloads to store high-value datasets that have to be available around the clock with full confidence that they can grab their data when they need it from within Lustre itself—a notable feature that the newest update offers.

Feature enhancements like the core one for the 2.5 release of Lustre, the addition of hierarchical storage management (HSM) resolve one of the key pain points for Lustre users—especially those on the enterprise side, many whom have made this a requirement for their adoption, says Shipman.

In essence, the value here is that from directly within Lustre, the update allows the files that are available in large-scale tape (or even other NFS storage systems) integrated within the same Lustre namespace users aren’t burdened with the constant concern of where their files are (on low cost/performance storage, tape, high performance storage). They are able now to manage in an integrated way on the same namespace and can automatically migrate from Lustre into, say for example, a tape archive or large-scale scalable NFS in a manner that’s transparent to the user. When the user comes back to access those files, the policy that they’ve set (whether it’s two months and then into tape, etc.) users can pull that data from wherever it is directly from within Lustre, it will stage those datasets into the Lustre file system and the processing lifecycle can begin anew.

Shipman says the addition of HSM is the direct result of their annual gathering of end users on both sides of the fence (academia and commercial) where new requirements and needs are shared. These meetings have produced other features that have bolstered Lustre’s wider appeal. Shipman says other improvements that have gone before include a solution to the problem of Lustre’s inability to scale the namespace and metadata performance. The fix here was the more recently-added DNE (distributed namespace—an OpenSFS-funded project) that takes aim at offering a more solid solution for big data enterprise users. Other features, including the online file system checker have responded to other enterprise-driven requests.

At the end of the day, however, Shipman says what is really driving Lustre’s lengthened reach into a more diverse range of environments is the vendor ecosystem’s commitment. The addition of new features are further enhanced by a large number of vendors who pull from the OpenSFS community code and create turnkey Lustre-based solutions that come ready to run on day one—a far-flung dream for those interested in Lustre even a few years ago.

As the OpenSFS community seeks to add an increasing set of features, including some around boosting single-client performance to round out other enhancements (metadata scability, data replication, online file system checking and now HSM), it will be interesting to see what commercial areas seem most drawn in by the shine of Lustre.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire