Why all-flash data lakes, and why now?
Today’s most demanding unstructured data workloads – such as massive graphics and video files, large repositories of analytical, research, genomics, and AI data, electronic design automation for semiconductors, high-performance computing (HPC) and numerous others – are difficult for many storage systems to handle. Why? They require massive amounts of CPU and GPU processing power and the ability to scale capacity and performance seamlessly.
Data locality, performance, and proven technology are top considerations for AI infrastructure. Companies want their file storage systems to keep pace with the unpredictable demands of a digital business. In fact, recent research from the Enterprise Strategy Group found big data/data lake repositories for unstructured data to be among the top three workloads respondents were investing in to keep pace with the demands of a digital business. Unlocking the business potential in data requires file storage to no longer be just big; it must be big, fast, and simple to manage.
Another piece of research from ESG shows these requirements are leading to an increase in all-flash data lakes.
That’s why today we’re furthering our decades-long leadership in the unstructured data storage arena with the introduction of our most powerful node yet – the Dell PowerScale F900.
Powering up our all-flash line-up with the F900
The F900, the latest addition to our award-winning PowerScale all-flash lineup, features dual-socket cascade lake processors, all-NVMe flash and NVIDIA GPUDirect compatibility to handle your most data intensive workloads. With this release, you get more power and scale through blazing fast all-NVMe, support for GPU accelerated applications, and the ability to easily scale up to 93 PB in one cluster. Simply put, the F900 is designed to be the workhorse of modern, high performance data lakes.
With this new release you also get more flexibility and choice for your unstructured data storage needs in the edge, core and public cloud. You can easily add in new F900 nodes or replace old nodes with new PowerScale nodes, all while having seamless compatibility with your existing Isilon clusters, thanks to the PowerScale OneFS operating system.
“We’re excited for the additional power and flexibility made available to us with the latest PowerScale all-flash platform and updates to OneFS. Knowing we can simply swap in the latest generation while the cluster remains online keeps us worry free,” said Keith Bradley, Director of Information Technology, Nature Fresh Farms. “With PowerScale all-flash we can support our most demanding data workloads – from new edge use cases, to the core data center, and potential public cloud workloads.”
Additionally, our PowerScale all-flash offerings provide options to support both on-premises and public cloud workloads, and you can choose whether to consume the technology as an appliance or as a service.
New powerful all-flash tier available with PowerScale for Google Cloud
Dell PowerScale for Google Cloud, the scale-out file service which brought powerful performance to Google Cloud, is now available with Tier 1 Agile configurations. These new all-flash deployment options offer a lower entry point with reduced minimum capacities and shorter commitment terms. Right-sized for the opportunity, these configurations enable an easy, hassle-free on-ramp and are a great option if you want to test drive the service.
“We continue to collaborate with Dell Technologies to deliver high value and more deployment options to our customers with Dell PowerScale for Google Cloud, which combines the massive scalability and performance of PowerScale with the economics and innovative native services of Google Cloud,” said Guru Pangal, GM Storage, Google Cloud. “As the only cloud provider to offer an integrated PowerScale offering, our expanded, powerful Tier 1 configurations deliver an all-flash performance to organizations looking for shorter commitment terms that can handle demanding file workloads. Our strong relationship with Dell Technologies means that we work side-by-side to deliver integrated, best-in-class storage services, and solutions to our joint customers.”
PowerScale: always simple, flexible, and reliable
Our PowerScale OneFS operating system – the power behind our PowerScale nodes – has been proven over and over again with customers ranging from 3 to 252 node clusters, which collectively form a hybrid-cloud enabled, enterprise data lake. Newly released PowerScale OneFS 9.2 speeds up PowerScale F200 (edge/entry nodes) by 25% and F600 (all-NVMe compact performance nodes) systems by 70% for sequential reads.¹ In addition, with the remote direct memory access (RDMA) support for applications and clients with network file systems (NFS) customers benefit from accelerated GPU-powered applications, significantly higher throughput performance and low latency communication, especially for single connection and read intensive workloads.
“Modern AI and data science applications require powerful performance and storage that provides maximum throughput, high bandwidth and low latency from the edge to the data center to the cloud,” said Manuvir Das, head of Enterprise Computing at NVIDIA. “With NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage, the Dell PowerScale F900 storage platform enables a broad range of customers across healthcare, financial services, automotive and many more industries to ensure their infrastructure is optimized for AI.”
With PowerScale you also get the added benefits that come with our world-class ecosystem that includes over 250 ISV partner integrations and certifications across AI, HPC, analytics, backup, data management, safety and security, autonomous driving, and genomics.
“Dell PowerScale is our ultimate file data platform,” said Maurizio Davini, CTO, University of Pisa. “It’s a technology that enables us to build data-driven products and helps us make good decisions with a great return on our investment. The value we get out of PowerScale is truly unmatched.” Davini shares more on the University’s use of PowerScale to power HPC and AI workloads in his interview with TheCUBE.
To learn more, join us on Wednesday, May 12, for the Powering Up Your Data Lake with All-Flash and All-NVMe solutions and APEX Storage as-a-Service webinar. For additional information, please visit www.delltechnologies.com/PowerScale.
¹ Based on internal performance testing performed by Dell for All-flash nodes with OneFS9.2 and OneFS9.1 on Spec ‘14 and NFS IOzone benchmarks. Performance varies by cluster and is dependent on workloads. Feb 2021. Actual results will vary.
