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In High Performance Computing (HPC), components need to be balanced to keep optimal performance, and to avoid performance bottlenecks. A highly parallel file system (PFS) can scale out to meet new large-scale data storage demands while recent advances in storage technologies like non-volatile memory express (NVMe) SSDs provide faster options.
A well-balanced storage system is required to achieve optimal performance, therefore its components including back-end arrays, storage controllers, disk drives, I/O cards, network adapters and switches must be able to provide similar bandwidth and distribute the load among the processors and memory of the servers they use. The PFS and supporting software must be able to balance the load on the different storage system components distributing data among them, monitoring performance and health while providing the administrative tools to manage the solution efficiently.
The Dell Technologies Validated Design for HPC PixStor Storage is a highly available (HA) solution, based on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and PowerVault ME4 storage arrays arranged in storage modules that can scale up its capacity to 8 PiB of formatted available storage (raw capacity 12,096 TB or 10.74 PiB). They can scale out to customer requirements by adding more of those modules up to the required capacity and performance. For situations that require very high throughput, an NVMe tier can scale out performance by adding pairs of HA nodes with NVMe devices using NVMeoF to mirror data among the servers.
The PixStor parallel file system adds a full range of enterprise features that can be geo-distributed, components that simplify administration, additional advanced search capabilities, extensive connectivity using enterprise protocols, and access to other storage devices both on and off premises leveraging cloud and other enterprise protocols. This storage solution offers a single namespace, is easy-to-use, high-throughput, multi-tiered, and it has available deployment services.