DataDirect Demos Lustre Scaling

CHATSWORTH, Calif. -- DataDirect Networks Inc., a leading provider of scalable storage systems for performance and capacity-driven applications, today announced that the companys 8th generation Silicon Storage Architecture (S2A) appliance and storage system will continue to take CFS/SUN’s Lustre scaling to new heights, enabling cluster I/O to several hundred gigabytes per second. DataDirect Networks manufactures the fastest, highest capacity, most scalable Lustre-based storage systems on the planet.

Lustre, taken from the words “Linux” and “cluster,” is a distributed file system used for large scale cluster computing. The file system, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in October 2007, was designed to scale to tens of thousands of nodes that are attached to petabytes of storage. The main advantage of the file system is that it does not compromise a storage system’s speed or security.

DataDirect Networks’ S2A storage appliance is an ideal fit for Lustre deployments because it offers high performance and consistency of performance that allows the Lustre file system to scale. It also enables Lustre to access data in a parallel fashion, a key benefit to scaling file system performance and simplifying the overall storage network.

S2A storage appliances provide the industry's highest performing and densest storage solutions. The systems enable the creation of differentiated high performance, high capacity NAS and SAN storage, parallel and shared file system storage, primary and nearline storage and virtual tape library storage solutions. It also incorporates enterprise-class data protection such as on-the-fly parity checking of all read I/Os and hardware RAID 6.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of DataDirect Networks’ largest customers, employs Lustre on Blue Gene/L, one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. Because of Lustre’s extreme flexibility, deployments of the technology are commonly found in applications related to science, finance, rich media, oil and gas and manufacturing."Scalable file system performance is extremely important across a wide range of HPC clusters, not only for large installations such as LLNL but also for entry level commercial users," said Peter Braam, vice president, Lustre, Sun Microsystems. "The Lustre file system is the most widely used open and scalable cluster file system in the market and when combined with DataDirect Networks' S2A storage systems, provides very scalable I/O solutions. We're pleased to deepen our relationship with DDN to include our Lustre file system in solutions packaged for the HPC market."

DataDirect Networks Inc.