September 11, 2009
Imagine a scalable network storage system designed especially for technical and scientific applications; a storage system running apps that require clusters of servers numbering from tens to tens of thousands. This type of system would let many users and/or servers share data needed to perform tasks such as analyze the stock market, simulate airflow over an airplane wing, or design a new pharmaceutical compound.
The ActiveStor network storage system by Panasas (www.panasas.com) is one such high-performance system that provides data to the servers at lightning speeds and minimizes and/or eliminates stalled applications, which means no waiting for the data.
I/O Importance
After the successful launch of the CU-CCMS (Clemson University Computational Center for Mobility Systems), a comprehensive computational engineering problem-solving center, the team realized the importance of having parallel I/O capability integrated into its dedicated HPC (high-performance computing) infrastructure.
"We decided that we wanted a seamlessly integrated hardware/software solution to resolve this important issue," says CU-CCMS Executive Director James H. Leylek, Ph.D. "In addition, it was important for us to have a scalable system, which can be expanded to hundreds of terabytes capacity in a modular fashion. And finally, we wanted a system that could be implemented within just a few days-it was unacceptable to have a team of people working for weeks or months to make a parallel I/O system operational."
As a comprehensive computational engineering center, Leylek says, CU-CCMS focuses on complex problems encountered in the automotive, aviation/aerospace, and energy industries. "We resolve an unusually wide range of problems such as multiple, massively large-scale simulations at one extreme and hundreds of relatively small simultaneous runs at the other extreme. Especially in transient (or time-dependent) computations, there is an inherent need to repeatedly save hundreds of large results files throughout every simulation."
According to Leylek, this situation quickly makes the HPC system "I/O bound," which prevents the engineers from realizing the full potential of what is a carefully balanced 35 teraflops system-one of the top 200 supercomputers in the world, according to the latest Top 500 list (www.top500.org), and dedicated solely to CU-CCMS. CU-CCMS had to graduate from a serial I/O system, which required many hours to read and write either a few massively large files or hundreds of smaller files all in series.
Solving The Problem
Effectively solving this problem required the implementation of a parallel I/O storage system. CU-CCMS looked at several options: Panasas ActiveStor and a number of competitors that all provided software-only solutions that required time and effort to integrate with a battery of disk hardware. "We were determined to avoid time-consuming solutions," Leylek says. "Also, we really wanted to connect our powerful SunBlade compute grid to the parallel I/O storage through IP-over-IB technology, making full use of our outstanding 20GBps Voltaire InfiniBand (IB) network. The Panasas ActiveStor 6200 system proved to be the best possible solution capable of resolving all of our requirements." CU-CCMS purchased a 120TB parallel I/O storage system.
When it came time to install the ActiveStor, Panasas offered to send one of its resident experts to oversee the installation, implementation, and total integration of its parallel I/O system into CU-CCMS' HPC infrastructure, explains Leylek. It turned out there was never a need for the physical presence of Panasas' staff. All the hardware was installed, the software was operational, and the integration with the
CU-CCMS system was completed in just a few days.
"Our original wish for a complete hardware/software system to be made operational without the need for prolonged development effort was realized," says Leylek. "We know of instances where a team of experts invested many months to implement competing products without any success. We are delighted with the smooth and trouble-free installation of the entire Panasas system."
With ActiveStor, extremely large files, which required hours of read and write times using the serial I/O system, can now be handled in minutes by the CU-CCMS staff, Leylek says. Whole new classes of problems are now well within the reach of the CU-CCMS HPC system. "We now have clear options to expand into the probabilistic analyses in support of probabilistic design in a diverse set of fields," says Leylek, "All due to the ability of our Panasas system to eliminate the painful ‘I/O-bound' status of our HPC system."
Dense Blade Architecture
With the Panasas system, industry-standard computer components are configured in a dense blade architecture that provides up to 20TB of raw storage for each 4U 19-inch rackmount shelf, says Larry Jones, vice president of marketing at Panasas. Multiple shelves are configured into a single shared storage realm-a storage cluster with capacity and performance that can be incrementally scaled.
Shelves house up to 11 StorageBlades and DirectorBlades in a variety of configurations, Jones says. Each StorageBlade includes a processor, memory (storage cache), dual SATA drives in a striped configuration, and a GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) interface. DirectorBlades include a processor, memory (metadata cache), and a disk used for metadata journaling. These blades plug into the front side of the shelf's passive midplane. Dual power supplies, a battery backup unit, and an integrated Ethernet switch plug into the rear of the shelf. Eleven of the 16 GbE switch ports interface directly with the 11 blade slots.
"There are two types of switches that provide either four GbE uplinks in the Panasas ActiveStor 7000 or a 10GbE interface for the ActiveStor 8000. The ActiveStor 7000 delivers 350MBps of data throughput with GbE, while the ActiveStor 8000 delivers over 600MBps. Our third system, the ActiveStor 9000, which improves on the ActiveStor 8000 by adding a solid-state disk (SSD), improves the system's ability to handle small and random data access requirements by more than double," says Jones.
Better Than Expected
Leylek says that no one could pay him enough to say wonderful things about Panasas' products, support, and services unless it were true. "I am proud to share what is truly a wonderful experience we are enjoying with all aspects of our working relationship with Panasas, its products, services, and support. In all honesty, without any exaggeration, we are happy to announce the fact that CU-CCMS is extremely happy with this Panasas acquisition."
by Julie Sartain