SC19: Panasas Re-Engineered PanFS Parallel File System Delivered on ActiveStor Ultra Appliance

Panasas, Inc. announced that its re-engineered PanFS parallel file system, delivered on the ActiveStor Ultra appliance, is shipping and in early deployment at Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd. and the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute.

The system is also deployed at a large US-based aerospace manufacturer, at the world’s largest provider of subsurface data to the energy sector and at a US-based global security and aerospace company. Built for price/performance and engineered for manageability, the new gen of PanFS is integrated with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware to deliver the fastest parallel file system at any price point.

“When we moved to a large cluster system we decided to deploy a parallel storage solution that delivered operational simplicity in addition to limitless scalability of capacity and performance,” said Toshiki Kishimoto, GM, computer-aided engineering and development dept., technology division, Sumitomo Metal Mining. “PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra offers us an environment that doesn’t require tuning to maintain peak performance, automates common maintenance and recovery tasks, and in case of questions, we have immediate access to support expertise from highly-qualified storage professionals.“

Unlimited performance scaling
The next gen of PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra offers unlimited performance scaling in 4GB/s building blocks, utilizing multi-tier intelligent data placement to maximize storage performance by placing metadata on low-latency NVMe SSDs, small files on high IO/s SSDs and large files on high-bandwidth HDDs. The system’s balanced node architecture optimizes networking, CPU, memory and storage capacity to prevent hot spots and bottlenecks, ensuring consistently performance regardless of workload.

“The advanced-research computing infrastructure deployed at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute has used Panasas storage for more than twelve years,” said James Wilgenbusch, Ph.D., director, research computing, office, VP, research, University of Minnesota. “Ours is a truly mixed workload environment, and we value the ease and speed with which Panasas handles multi-discipline workloads such as CFD, CAE, computational physics and chemistry, and bioinformatics, to name a few. The new PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra expands on that tradition by delivering an appliance built for unlimited linear performance scalability at a highly attractive price point.“

Frustration-free appliance experience
The PanFS parallel file system is delivered on ActiveStor Ultra, a turnkey appliance that provides the performance, enterprise-grade reliability and manageability required to process large and complex datasets. These datasets are associated with HPC workloads and emerging applications such as AI, precision medicine, autonomous driving, and augmented and virtual reality. It goes from dock to data in one day, providing a plug-and-play solution that is easy to install, manage and grow. With ActiveStor Ultra’s modular architecture and building-block design, enterprises can start small and scale linearly by scaling metadata performance, bandwidth and capacity independently and without limitations.

“The re-engineered PanFS returns Panasas to the ranks of top-performing HPC storage systems on the market, while maintaining the frustration-free storage experience our customers have come to expect and value,” said Faye Pairman, CEO, Panasas. “With the new PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra, our customers can take advantage of the price/performance in a storage appliance that maximizes simplicity, boosts reliability, and delivers the lowest TCO.“

PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra is available for purchase.

Resources:
Panasas ActiveStor Solution: Architectural White Paper (registration required)
Video: Panasas NAS Architecture Comparison – Not All NAS Architectures Can Keep Up With HPC

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