The PowerScale accelerator nodes include the PowerScale P100 performance accelerator and the PowerScale B100 backup accelerator. Both the P100 and B100 are based on the 1U PowerEdge R640 servers and can be part of a PowerScale cluster that is powered by OneFS 9.3 or later. The accelerator nodes contain boot media only and are optimized for CPU/memory configurations.

PowerScale P100 performance accelerator is a node that adds performance to the workflows on a PowerScale cluster that is generally composed of nodes that are CPU-bound. Each node provides additional CPU horsepower for compute-bound applications and additional DRAM that can be used as L1 cache. The P100 also provides additional network bandwidth to a cluster. The P100 nodes can be part of a solution that targets a specific workload to meet specific costs and performance targets. A single P100 node can be added to a cluster. Expansion is through single-node increments. The P100 supports inline compression and deduplication.

The P100 provides a dedicated cache, separate from the cluster. The additional CPU power to the cluster improves performance for read- and reread-intensive workloads. The front-end ports provide additional connectivity and bandwidth to clients. The P100 was tested against the PowerScale F900 and F600 all-flash node types.

PowerScale B100 backup accelerator provides the ability to back up a PowerScale cluster using a two-way NDMP protocol. The B100 is delivered in a cost-effective form factor to address the SLA targets and tape backup needs of a wide variety of workloads. Each node delivers Fibre Channel ports that can connect directly to a tape subsystem or a Storage Area Network (SAN). The B100 does not contain any local primary data storage. A single B100 node can be added to a cluster. The B100 can integrate easily with current tape infrastructure and with leading data backup and recovery software technologies. The B100 can be added to a cluster that is composed of all-flash, hybrid, and archive nodes.