Dell | Terascala HPC Storage Solution

The unique Dell™ | Terascala® HPC Storage Solution provides high-throughput storage based on the Lustre® parallel file system

Overview

If you are a researcher within a university or you are using a high-performance computing (HPC) solution in your department and need to deploy a fully supported, high-performance and cost-effective parallel file system storage solution, the Dell | Terascala HPC Storage Solution (DT-HSS) is designed for you. Because you have told us about the importance of a good storage solution for an HPC environment, the Dell | Terascala HPC Storage Solution is designed to be an appliance that is easy to deploy, configure and manage. It also scales both in capacity and performance.

With your requirements in mind, we are always looking for ways to simplify our technology so you can focus on your research. The Dell | Terascala HPC Storage Solution is a unique new storage solution that provides high-output Lustre® file system-based storage as an appliance. With performance of up to 6.2 GB/s[i] read and 4.2 GB/s[i] write per base active/active Object Storage Server pair, this solution delivers the performance necessary to get maximum utilization from your high-performance computing infrastructure. Using intelligent yet intuitive management software, the Dell | Terascala HPC Storage Solution simplifies managing Lustre-based storage including failover of object and metadata server nodes.

Solution Components:

Metadata Server Pair

The Metadata Server (MDS) stores the file system metadata. The Metadata Server Pair consists of two highly available active/passive PowerEdge™ R710 metadata servers connected to a PowerVault™ MD3220 with 12TB of raw shared storage. To provide high bandwidth and low latency link for clients to reach user data, each Metadata server provides QDR InfiniBand connectivity for clients. The MDS pair provides a single name space for the user data stored in one or more Object Storage Severs.

Object Storage Server Pair

The Object Storage Server (OSS) stores the user data. The OSS pair consists of two highly available active/active PowerEdge R710 object storage servers connected to two PowerVault MD3200 storage enclosures. Each OSS pair provides up to 6.2 GB/s[i] of read throughput and up to 4.2 GB/s[i] of write throughput. From a minimum of 48TB of raw capacity, each OSS pair can scale up to a maximum of 384TB by adding PowerVault™ MD1200 disk enclosures to an OSS pair.

Terascala Management Solution

The Terascala Management Solution (TMS) is the software interface, monitoring and management agents, and file system that simplifies the on-going support of the overall storage solution. Terascala's Rapid Failover technology leverages the monitoring agents to efficiently detect error conditions requiring failover. This insures that failovers occur quickly when needed, but, just as important, failovers do not occur when not needed. Notification technology delivers emails directly to administrators when issues occur, freeing them to focus on other areas. With a single view of all the components of the solution, system administrators without extensive parallel file system experience can easily manage and maintain this storage appliance.

Key Features

Advanced management and monitoring– End-to-end management and monitoring of the entire storage system is simple with easy-to-use management interface.

High data throughput –Up to 6.2 GB/s read and 4.2GB/s write sequential throughput per active/active base object storage server pair. Performance and capacity scale by adding additional OSS pairs.

Superb customer support-  All the hardware and software (including Lustre) components of the solution are fully supported by experienced Dell and Terascala customer support professionals.

Procurement and Deployment Simplicity- Fully bundled, pre-configured and tested solution available from Dell. Onsite installation, configuration and customer training help minimize deployment time.

Choice of configurations and ease of scalability- Using the building block approach, the configuration that meets your capacity and performance requirements can be easily architected. The solution can scale from a minimum of 48TB to Petabytes of raw capacity in a single namespace.

High available OSS/MDS configurations – Active/Active OSS and Active/Passive MDS configurations offer utmost availability and outstanding performance.

High availability storage platform– Active/active dual RAID controllers on Dell MD32x0s with hot-swappable disk drives, redundant power supplies and fans enhance storage availability.