Fastest HPC Parallel File System at Any Price-Point Hits the Market

The New PanFS on the ActiveStor Ultra Storage System Now in Early Deployment with Five Marquee Customers

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Panasas^®, a leader in high-performance computing (HPC) data storage solutions, today announced that its re-engineered PanFS^® parallel file system, delivered on the Panasas ActiveStor^® Ultra appliance, is now shipping and in early deployment at Sumitomo Metal Mining and the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. The system is also deployed at a large U.S.-based aerospace manufacturer, at the world’s largest provider of subsurface data to the energy sector and at a U.S.-based global security and aerospace company. Built for price/performance and engineered for manageability, the new generation of PanFS is integrated with state-of-the art 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, general manager, Computer-Aided Engineering and Development Dept., Technology Division, Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd. “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 generation of PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra offers unlimited performance scaling in 4 GB/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 IOPS 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 high performance regardless of workload.

“The advanced-research computing infrastructure deployed at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute has used Panasas data storage for more than 12 years,” said James Wilgenbusch, Ph.D., director of research computing, Office of the Vice President for 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 new PanFS parallel file system is delivered on Panasas ActiveStor Ultra, a turnkey appliance that provides the extreme 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. ActiveStor Ultra 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 data storage systems on the market, while maintaining the frustration-free storage experience our customers have come to expect and value,” said Faye Pairman, chief executive officer at Panasas. “With the new PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra, our customers can take advantage of the industry’s leading price/performance in a storage appliance that maximizes simplicity, boosts reliability, and delivers the lowest total cost of ownership.”

Availability

PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra is available for purchase now. Contact Panasas sales to inquire about system configurations tailored to meet your unique workload requirements. For more information on the technical capabilities of PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra, download the architecture white paper here.

Panasas at SC19 – Denver, CO – November 18-21, 2019

Panasas technology will be on display at SC19 (Supercomputing 2019), the International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado, from November 18-21, 2019. Please contact us to schedule a meeting.

Demos in Booth #225

• PanFS on ActiveStor Ultra
  
  See the new PanFS parallel file system on a fully loaded ActiveStor Ultra rack running the industry-standard HPC benchmark IOR, demonstrating world-class performance.

• Ludicrous Mode – Extreme Acceleration: A Look at the Future of HPC and AI
  
  Take a peek inside our engineering lab to get a look at the direction storage is taking for the high-performance data center of the future, where AI and low-latency applications converge with traditional HPC workloads. Coined Ludicrous Mode, this NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) layer is added to the three-tier data placement inside today’s PanFS to create the most economical approach for addressing large data sets and a wide variety of high-performance workloads.

SC19 Exhibitor Forum – November 19, 2019 | 1:30pm-2pm | Exhibitor Forum 501-502

• Topic: Adding low-latency capability to PanFS for AI and HPC
  
  Presenter: Curtis Anderson, Software Architect, Panasas

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About Panasas

Panasas delivers high-performance computing (HPC) data storage solutions that support industry and research innovation around the world. Whether it’s building the next Dreamliner, winning a Formula One race, creating mind-bending visual effects, curing disease or modelling climate change, the world’s leading companies trust Panasas to support their most innovative HPC projects. For more information, visit www.panasas.com.

©2019 Panasas, Inc. Panasas, the Panasas logo, PanFS and ActiveStor are registered trademarks or trademarks of Panasas, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Contacts

Panasas Press Contact:

Katie LeChase

10Fold Communications

(585) 410-5199

Panasas@10fold.com