International Conference for HPC: DDN Intelliflash H-Series Systems and EXAScaler 5.2 Capabilities to Optimize Data Management

DDN (DataDirect Networks, Inc.) announced mid-range storage systems, EXAScaler and enhanced DataFlow features supplying the flexibility and data mobility for enterprise AI and analytics applications.

The global demand for AI, analytics and real-time insight has created new paths to innovation in industries, along with massive management and scaling challenges. The addition of these capabilities to the company’s portfolio simplifies and automates data-centric operations for a wider range of enterprise customer applications and use cases.

These firm’s portfolio enhancements were launching this week at The International Conference for HPC, networking, storage and analysis – a supercomputing event, held online this year. The company’s virtual booth highlights AI storage solutions that address the growing demand for data-centric AI, analytics and real-time insight among enterprises of all sizes.

“Today’s data-intensive enterprises face increasing challenges around speed, scale, analytics, and protection to meet the needs of AI, big data, multicloud, and HPC,” said Dr. James Coomer, SVP, products. “DDN now makes it possible for enterprise IT customers to take advantage of our at-scale leadership and innovation in Intelligent Infrastructure to both simplify the management of data and enhance its value everywhere with versatile, cost-efficient storage for on-premises, hybrid and multicloud environments.“

The company’s portfolio addresses customer challenges for AI workloads at any scale, extending the advantages of its technology leadership to a number of enterprise environments and use cases. This drive to improve enterprise data management is recognized by Coldago Research‘s File Storage Map for 2020, a study that evaluated more than 30 storage vendors from a technology and architecture standpoint and identified DDN as both a market leader and the vendor with a storage strategy and vision.

“DDN is a proven industry leader with decades of trusted storage solutions deployed at many of the most prestigious and demanding data centers in the world. Broadening its portfolio to address the growing AI and performance needs of enterprise environments is a prudent decision that will improve operational efficiencies for countless organizations,” said Philippe Nicolas, lead analyst, Coldago Research. “In addition, the unified storage platform is a realization of DDN’s vision with the acquisitions made in previous years, enabling simplified integration of Tintri technology into DDN’s portfolio to benefit both enterprise and HPC customers at any scale.“

Performance mid-range enterprise storage

Intelliflash H-Series systems, offered by the company as well as Tintri, are built on the same NVMe-accelerated platform used by the firm at-scale solutions to meet the most demanding performance-intensive workloads. These hybrid flash systems combine the performance of NVMe with the economics of HDDs for a full-service intelligent storage infrastructure that autonomously optimizes SSD-to-HDD ratios and delivers scalable performance, along with a variety of automated, time-saving management features that provide an outstanding experience for IT staff and end-users.

Universities, research institutions and businesses that need cost-effective scalability, multi-petabyte file services, or wish to combine data-intensive applications with other business use cases can leverage the H-Series robust capabilities, including:

Enterprise application support – Organizations can deploy mission-critical applications, AI and analytics workloads and end-user file shares – including large scale file services – without the performance degradation experienced when using competitive solutions. Enterprises also can realize near-instant backups and robust disaster protection via snapshot and replication technologies.
Efficiency and analytics – The H-Series enables enterprise workload consolidation with concurrent multiprotocol support for block, file and object storage, and VMs on a single system. These systems also enhance cost-efficiency with data reduction technologies and incorporate powerful analytics software for faster data insights.

Expanding EXAScaler capabilities

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EXAScaler 5.2 complements Intelliflash H-Series with performance at scale for unstructured data and its STRATAGEM data management architecture, introduced in EXAScaler 5.0, that enables transparent flash tiering for high performance, scalability and efficiency without compromise. It also incorporates data management tools designed to enhance AI applications in life sciences, financial services, and autonomous vehicle use cases:

Snapshots – EXAScaler Snapshot’s lightweight architecture ensures that all data stays online and accessible, protecting vs. accidental file modification and deletion or malicious encryption. Users can access prior versions of their files with a simple self-service model.
Sync – Synchronized data movement between EXAScaler and other file systems, enables flexible, native data protection for entire file systems or selected datasets. Sync also simplifies cloud-bursting or data transfers to 3rd party clouds.
Search – The Search feature simplifies administration, enabling fast metadata scans and file searches at any scale. Administrators also have the option to create new statistics and visualizations to improve efficiency and trend analysis.

Data in right place at right time

DataFlow data management software offers deeper integration into EXAScaler to accelerate and simplify data movement. In conjunction with EXA5 FastScan, which enables archive, backup and migration for large volumes of data, it can identify file changes and move incremental data to a customer’s designated location.

Additionally, DataFlow provides another level of flexibility and data protection, allowing customers to migrate data to the cloud, enabling cloud sync file systems as well as snapshot capabilities. This level of cloud mobility provides users with the assurance that data can easily migrate in a variety of ways, independent of filesystems or platforms, including local-to-cloud, cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-local, and backup/archive object storage to tape to meet a customer’s evolving needs. This creates freedom from lock-in and gives customers the agility to optimize data management for today’s dynamic requirements.

EXAScaler 5.2, the DataFlow features and Intelliflash H-Series are available directly from the company and through partners.

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