Panasas Unveils New Storage Appliance with SSD Acceleration

By Michael Feldman

September 17, 2012

Panasas has launched ActiveStor 14, the company’s fifth-generation storage applicance aimed at high performance computing. The new offering adds solid state drives (SSDs) to what has been almost exclusively a hard disk-based (HDD) NAS storage line-up. The inclusion of SSDs into the company’s flagship offering is further proof that flash memory has become a mainstream storage technology for accelerating HPC workloads.

It’s also a recognition that HPC storage is more that just about streaming lots of data from cheap SATA drives. This has been the case for some time, even if the customers themselves were unaware of it. When Panasas surveyed 10 typical HPC sites (across government, finance, academia and manufacturing), it was found that 50 to 70 percent of their files fell into the “small file” category — defined as less than 64KB.

This was true even for those users whose storage capacity was dominated by very large files, and who believed high-throughput I/O was the crux of their storage needs. “The reality is that almost all customers are dealing with mixed workloads.” says Geoffrey Noer, Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Panasas.

The presence of so many small files suggests that directory information retrieval and random I/0 performance is a critical requirement across many HPC sites. At the same time, these users had a concrete need for high levels of streaming performance to feed at least a portion of their applications. The need for both bandwidth and IOPS from Panasas’ customer base was central to the inclusion of SSD hardware alongside high capacity SATA drives in ActiveStor 14.

Using flash technology isn’t exactly virgin territory for Panasas. In 2009, they came out with ActiveStor 9, an SSD-accelerated storage appliance that was aimed specifically at small file I/O. Since it depopulated disk slots in favor of SSDs though, ActiveStor 9 suffered on the throughput side.

With ActiveStor 14, the company delivers both IOPS and throughput by marrying big SATA disks with the latest SSD technology. The idea is to store all the file metadata on the SSDs as well as all the small file data. The idea is to put the vast majority of the “hot” data into flash, which should greatly increase I/O performance.

There are three ActiveStor 14 models available, each with its own mix of HDD and SSD capacity on the storage blade to serve different application profiles.

1. For large file throughput-oriented applications, each blade houses two 4TB SATA disks, one 120GB SSD and 8GB of cache. This is aimed at energy exploration, government, manufacturing, and academia. List price for 81.2TB of storage is $125K.

2. For more mixed workloads, they’ve come up with a blade identical to the one above, but with a 300 GB SSD. This configuration is targeted at analytics for biosciences, especially genomics. List price for 83TB is $145K.

3. For truly file heavy, random IOPS applications, they have a blade with two 2TB SATA disks, one 480GB SSD, and 16GB of cache. Panasas calls this one the ActiveStor 14T (for turbo) and it’s aimed at financial analytics, like Monte Carlo simulations for arbitrage modeling. Because of the greater ratio of SSD storage to HDD, this is the most expensive model, with a list price of $160K for 44.8TB.

But you get the performance you pay for. A shelf of ActiveStor 14T, with 27 data drives, delivered 20,745 operations per second (SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3) and an overall response time of 1.99 milliseconds. Using two shelves, operations per second doubled to 41,116 and overall response time was cut to 1.39 milliseconds.

It’s no surprise Panasas developed ActiveStor configurations designed specifically for financial services and biosciences, since those two verticals have seen the biggest uptick in sales at Panasas over the last year. According to company chief marketing officer Barbara Murphy, they have seen revenue grow by 5X in the financial sector and nearly 2.5X in biosciences since 2011.

Panasas revenue, in general, has been growing at a nice clip over the past 12 months, and actually has been on the rise for four straight years. But commercial sales are accounting for a much greater share now: from about 55 percent in 2011 to over 70 percent in 2012. With public spending on the wane a bit, and businesses investing more heavily in HPC, Panasas intends to put a lot of energy into serving these markets. “We believe that the commercial space is going to adopt high performance compute very aggressively over the next couple of years,” Murphy told HPCwire.

Over that same period, Panasas has grown their customer base from 300 to 400. They’ve has done so by relying more on their OEM partners, like Dell, HP, SGI, and Bull, to expand the revenue base. Today Panasas claims a nice selection of elite customers, including seven of the top 10 public oil & gas firms, NIH, the Beijing Genomics Institute, UCLA, Leicester University, and BNP Paribas.

In ActiveStor 14, they believe they have a platform that can compete very well in the analytics domain, especially against more expensive offerings from EMC Isilon and NetApp. At a price point of $4/GB price point for the 14T model and under $2/GB for the less SSD-rich models, they compare favorably with the $12/GB price of Isilon’s S200 and $9/GB for NetApp’s FAS6240. The latter delivers slightly better performance (using the SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3 benchmark), but is more than twice as expensive on a capacity basis.

Despite the ActiveStor 14 design being suitable for a range of analytics-type applications, Panasas will continue to focus on its technical computing/HPC roots, according to Noer. “Our goal here is not to go after the enterprise market,” he says. With the HPC on a very healthy growth trajectory, that should be enough to keep Panasas on its upward revenue path.

The company is demonstrating ActiveStor 14 gear this week at the HPC for Wall Street event in New York City and at the Trading Architecture Europe conference in London. Systems can be ordered today, with shipments slated for November 2012.

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!

Quantum Companies D-Wave and Rigetti Again Face Stock Delisting

October 4, 2024

Both D-Wave (NYSE: QBTS) and Rigetti (Nasdaq: RGTI) are again facing stock delisting. This is a third time for D-Wave, which issued a press release today following notification by the SEC. Rigetti was notified of delisti Read more…

Alps Scientific Symposium Highlights AI’s Role in Tackling Science’s Biggest Challenges

October 4, 2024

ETH Zürich recently celebrated the launch of the AI-optimized “Alps” supercomputer with a scientific symposium focused on the future possibilities of scientific AI thanks to increased compute power and a flexible ar Read more…

The New MLPerf Storage Benchmark Runs Without ML Accelerators

October 3, 2024

MLCommons is known for its independent Machine Learning (ML) benchmarks. These benchmarks have focused on mathematical ML operations and accelerators (e.g., Nvidia GPUs). Recently, MLCommons introduced the results of its Read more…

DataPelago Unveils Universal Engine to Unite Big Data, Advanced Analytics, HPC, and AI Workloads

October 3, 2024

DataPelago today emerged from stealth with a new virtualization layer that it says will allow users to move AI, data analytics, and ETL workloads to whatever physical processor they want, without making code changes, the Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit Evolves into Developer Conference

October 2, 2024

Instead of its usual quantum summit this year, IBM will hold its first IBM Quantum Developer Conference which the company is calling, “an exclusive, first-of-its-kind.” It’s planned as an in-person conference at th Read more…

Stayin’ Alive: Intel’s Falcon Shores GPU Will Survive Restructuring

October 2, 2024

Intel's upcoming Falcon Shores GPU will survive the brutal cost-cutting measures as part of its "next phase of transformation." An Intel spokeswoman confirmed that the company will release Falcon Shores as a GPU. The com Read more…

The New MLPerf Storage Benchmark Runs Without ML Accelerators

October 3, 2024

MLCommons is known for its independent Machine Learning (ML) benchmarks. These benchmarks have focused on mathematical ML operations and accelerators (e.g., Nvi Read more…

DataPelago Unveils Universal Engine to Unite Big Data, Advanced Analytics, HPC, and AI Workloads

October 3, 2024

DataPelago today emerged from stealth with a new virtualization layer that it says will allow users to move AI, data analytics, and ETL workloads to whatever ph Read more…

Stayin’ Alive: Intel’s Falcon Shores GPU Will Survive Restructuring

October 2, 2024

Intel's upcoming Falcon Shores GPU will survive the brutal cost-cutting measures as part of its "next phase of transformation." An Intel spokeswoman confirmed t Read more…

How GenAI Will Impact Jobs In the Real World

September 30, 2024

There’s been a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the potential for generative AI to take people’s jobs. The capability of large language model Read more…

IBM and NASA Launch Open-Source AI Model for Advanced Climate and Weather Research

September 25, 2024

IBM and NASA have developed a new AI foundation model for a wide range of climate and weather applications, with contributions from the Department of Energy’s Read more…

Intel Customizing Granite Rapids Server Chips for Nvidia GPUs

September 25, 2024

Intel is now customizing its latest Xeon 6 server chips for use with Nvidia's GPUs that dominate the AI landscape. The chipmaker's new Xeon 6 chips, also called Read more…

Building the Quantum Economy — Chicago Style

September 24, 2024

Will there be regional winner in the global quantum economy sweepstakes? With visions of Silicon Valley’s iconic success in electronics and Boston/Cambridge� Read more…

How GPUs Are Embedded in the HPC Landscape

September 23, 2024

Grasping the basics of Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) architecture is crucial for understanding how these powerful processors function, particularly in high-per Read more…

Shutterstock_2176157037

Intel’s Falcon Shores Future Looks Bleak as It Concedes AI Training to GPU Rivals

September 17, 2024

Intel's Falcon Shores future looks bleak as it concedes AI training to GPU rivals On Monday, Intel sent a letter to employees detailing its comeback plan after Read more…

Nvidia Shipped 3.76 Million Data-center GPUs in 2023, According to Study

June 10, 2024

Nvidia had an explosive 2023 in data-center GPU shipments, which totaled roughly 3.76 million units, according to a study conducted by semiconductor analyst fir Read more…

Granite Rapids HPC Benchmarks: I’m Thinking Intel Is Back (Updated)

September 25, 2024

Waiting is the hardest part. In the fall of 2023, HPCwire wrote about the new diverging Xeon processor strategy from Intel. Instead of a on-size-fits all approa Read more…

AMD Clears Up Messy GPU Roadmap, Upgrades Chips Annually

June 3, 2024

In the world of AI, there's a desperate search for an alternative to Nvidia's GPUs, and AMD is stepping up to the plate. AMD detailed its updated GPU roadmap, w Read more…

Ansys Fluent® Adds AMD Instinct™ MI200 and MI300 Acceleration to Power CFD Simulations

September 23, 2024

Ansys Fluent® is well-known in the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) space and is praised for its versatility as a general-purpose solver. Its impr Read more…

Shutterstock_1687123447

Nvidia Economics: Make $5-$7 for Every $1 Spent on GPUs

June 30, 2024

Nvidia is saying that companies could make $5 to $7 for every $1 invested in GPUs over a four-year period. Customers are investing billions in new Nvidia hardwa Read more…

Shutterstock 1024337068

Researchers Benchmark Nvidia’s GH200 Supercomputing Chips

September 4, 2024

Nvidia is putting its GH200 chips in European supercomputers, and researchers are getting their hands on those systems and releasing research papers with perfor Read more…

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…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Everyone Except Nvidia Forms Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Consortium

May 30, 2024

Consider the GPU. An island of SIMD greatness that makes light work of matrix math. Originally designed to rapidly paint dots on a computer monitor, it was then Read more…

IBM Develops New Quantum Benchmarking Tool — Benchpress

September 26, 2024

Benchmarking is an important topic in quantum computing. There’s consensus it’s needed but opinions vary widely on how to go about it. Last week, IBM introd Read more…

Quantum and AI: Navigating the Resource Challenge

September 18, 2024

Rapid advancements in quantum computing are bringing a new era of technological possibilities. However, as quantum technology progresses, there are growing conc Read more…

Intel Customizing Granite Rapids Server Chips for Nvidia GPUs

September 25, 2024

Intel is now customizing its latest Xeon 6 server chips for use with Nvidia's GPUs that dominate the AI landscape. The chipmaker's new Xeon 6 chips, also called Read more…

Google’s DataGemma Tackles AI Hallucination

September 18, 2024

The rapid evolution of large language models (LLMs) has fueled significant advancement in AI, enabling these systems to analyze text, generate summaries, sugges Read more…

Microsoft, Quantinuum Use Hybrid Workflow to Simulate Catalyst

September 13, 2024

Microsoft and Quantinuum reported the ability to create 12 logical qubits on Quantinuum's H2 trapped ion system this week and also reported using two logical qu Read more…

IonQ Plots Path to Commercial (Quantum) Advantage

July 2, 2024

IonQ, the trapped ion quantum computing specialist, delivered a progress report last week firming up 2024/25 product goals and reviewing its technology roadmap. Read more…

US Implements Controls on Quantum Computing and other Technologies

September 27, 2024

Yesterday the Commerce Department announced export controls on quantum computing technologies as well as new controls for advanced semiconductors and additive Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire