High-performance computing is the new normal, and that means so too are the storage challenges that are generally associated with exascale workload outputs. Just because you don’t have supercomputers on-site, it doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. It might not at first appear to be HPC-level data outputs that you’re dealing with, but as AI and machine learning technologies are now prevalent within the enterprise, you can rest assured that the face of HPC is changing – it has already changed – and you’re probably grappling with the notion that your data center is going to be a very different beast in one, three, or five years from now.
No longer just a problem for massive research centers, data explosion and the combined challenges of planning for it, managing it, protecting it, and getting the most value from it, are now front and center for just about any CIO to systems architect.
So what is the solution? It may surprise you to learn that it’s a lot more accessible, interoperable, and affordable than you think: Ceph is the leading open-source, software-defined storage solution available. It’s a brilliantly natural solution due to its native block device layer RBD which is built upon its scalable, reliable, and performant object storage system, RADOS.
Plus, it comes with countless tried-and-tested supporters from data centers of varying sizes and sectors, from the likes of OVH and DreamHost. Other reasons it’s such an ideal solution are that it’s flexible, inexpensive, fault-tolerant, hardware neutral, and infinitely scalable which makes it an excellent choice for enterprises dealing with data, of any size and vertical, not just the CERN’s of the world. And for the cherry on the cake: vendor lock-in can be avoided altogether.
Other benefits include:
- support for multiple storage types including object, block, and file systems. Regardless of the type of workloads being conducted, the resulting files, blocks and/or objects can all live in harmony in Ceph.
- natively supporting hybrid cloud environments which makes it easy for remote teams, who might be located anywhere in the world, to upload their data in different storage formats.
- resilience: there’s no need to buy redundant hardware in the event a component fails, because Ceph’s self-healing functionality quickly replicates the failed node, ensuring data redundancy and higher availability.
SoftIron makes the world’s finest, unified storage solutions for today’s enterprise. Our HyperDrive® storage appliance is custom-designed and built to optimize Ceph, unleashing the full potential for the HPC data center. HyperDrive is a high-performance, scale-out solution that runs at wire-speed, and at less than 100W per 1U form factor.
The University of Minnesota’s Supercomputing Institute (MSI) is a world-class facility that provides computing infrastructure and expertise to foster innovation through advanced computing technologies, scientific computing services, and more. When MSI’s legacy infrastructure was hampering the Institute’s goals to service its internal customers with scalable, easy-to-deploy, high-performance data solutions, it turned to SoftIron for a more cost-effective, scalable storage solution. Read more about how the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute unlocked cost savings and scalability with SoftIron and Ceph here: Download the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute case study.
Meet SoftIron and see HyperDrive in action
Book a meeting with SoftIron at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, SuperCompute 2019, Computing Insight UK or BioData World Congress, to learn more about how HyperDrive can help in your data center.
To learn more about SoftIron, Ceph, and HyperDrive, visit www.softiron.com