Consolidate for better, faster, and lower cost HPC storage
High-performance computing (HPC) storage has always frustrated administrators, managers, and users. Tech companies want to push the limits of computational power, but they’re stuck with a fragmented storage environment for their HPC systems. This web of storage hinders your performance and productivity, complicates your data management situation, stifles innovation, and drives up your costs.
We see your frustrations, and our goal at Quobyte is clear: high-performance storage shouldn’t come with high-maintenance headaches. Let’s look at what’s happening now in HPC storage and how we’re trying to solve those challenges.
The Current HPC Storage Landscape
Today’s HPC environments typically rely on a mix of storage solutions, each serving a specific purpose and with its own quirks and limitations.
- Scratch storage: This storage is fast for intensive I/O operations, but is often unreliable and difficult to manage because of its focus on speed.
- Home directories on NFS: This is a more reliable option for long-term storage, but is slower and more expensive due to redundancy and backup features. It’s also plagued by performance bottlenecks and scalability challenges.
- Project or cold data storage: This is ideal for less-frequently accessed data or storing completed projects and offers lower performance at significantly reduced costs per terabyte. It’s often kept separate from main storage environments, decreasing accessibility and performance.
- Object storage: This is highly scalable and cost-effective storage for unstructured data but is less suitable for HPC workloads due to higher latency.
- Specialized ML/AI storage: Companies often add this because of the marketing hype that GPUs require specialized, isolated storage, leading to data silos and increased admin management.
The Challenges of the Current Landscape
This fragmented approach creates headaches for everyone. Admins struggle to juggle multiple systems and troubleshoot integration issues while they forever update capacity plans. Traditional storage introduces performance bottlenecks, especially for parallel I/O operations or high-volume read/write actions common in HPC workloads. Others don’t scale effectively as data volumes grow, leading to performance degradation and capacity constraints.
Users waste time tracking file locations, manually moving data between systems, and creating copies of data across each storage location. They experience varying performance depending on which storage tier they’re accessing, complicating application development and workflow optimization. Rigid storage tiers may not adapt well to users’ changing workload requirements, introducing more performance issues and restricting new HPC applications that use different data I/O patterns. Innovation is stifled, and new HPC applications remain untested.
From a cost perspective, this fragmented approach makes upper management wonder why their storage costs are so high, and the performance of their HPC storage is so low. They deal with more staff complaints, lower productivity, and missing out on new products and services. — all because they didn’t use the right HPC storage solution.
Simplify HPC Storage with Smart Consolidation
Quobyte offers a fresh approach to HPC storage, drawing inspiration from hyperscalers and aligning it with enterprise storage needs. We address the challenges of traditional HPC storage by offering an innovative way to consolidate multiple storage environments into a single, unified system. Our HPC storage solution offers high-performance, unified data access across a highly resilient design that reduces management overhead and costs.
Deploy Streamlined, Cost-effective Storage Infrastructure
Our software-defined approach allows customers to simplify their data infrastructure by eliminating the need for extra networking hardware and any proprietary appliances. You can use standard Linux servers from any vendor with Quobyte’s HPC storage, letting you take advantage of any existing relationships and bulk purchase discounts.
Enjoy Exceptional Storage Resiliency
One of our standout features is our resiliency across servers. Our solution is easy to maintain and update, with zero downtime and no need for maintenance windows. It’s so seamless to users and admins that they can keep using the system even while the hardware is replaced underneath. Customers tell us they’re no longer panicked whenever a disk or server fails; Quobyte’s HPC storage has full fault tolerance with automatic failover, asynchronous geo-replication, and bidirectional synchronization. Their data is safe no matter the storage environment, where it’s stored, or what it’s stored on.
Support Hybrid Media
Combine flash and HDD storage so your team can enjoy massive performance for small files, AI training, and scratch storage while enjoying the cost-effectiveness of HDD storage for cold data and traditional HPC applications. Our solution offers transparent internal tiering so users and admins can access their data with a single path or file name. It also supports file and object-storing protocols, helping you consolidate isolated systems and simplify data analytics workflows.
Manage Growth with Reasonable Costs
Reduce operational costs as your storage needs grow with cost-effective commodity hardware and the ability to combine storage types like flash and HDDs. Use our built-in analytics tools to understand and optimize all your storage environments so you can scale proactively while managing costs.
Automated Storage Controls
Quobyte’s policy engine provides granular data placement controls so you can isolate data environments based on location, data type, and more. Use the built-in policies or create your own to manage unique use cases for your industry or business. For example, isolate temporary workloads like scratch space from the main HPC storage automatically to improve performance.
Enable Multi-tenancy Storage
Our solution offers robust multi-tenancy options so you can separate user identity sources (LDAP/AD), offer Storage-as-a-Service for different groups or teams, and enable role-based access controls for sensitive data. These layers also make it easier for admins to manage user groups and access options, allowing for better data security guideline compliance transparency.
Uncomplicate Your HPC Storage
Today’s digital-first, fast-paced research and enterprise environments shouldn’t risk their high-performance computing storage with complex and expensive options. Embracing modern, software-defined solutions like Quobyte gives you the flexibility and budget to push the boundaries of innovation rather than dumping time and money into a money pit.
The future of HPC storage is unified, flexible, and remarkably simple to manage. It’s time to leave behind the traditional, fragmented, high-maintenance approach of the past and embrace a storage solution that keeps pace with the demands of high-performance computing.
