HPC 2014-15 | Storage


Why storage is as important as computation


The era of data-centric HPC is upon us. Robert Roe investigates how data storage companies are rising to the challenge


In August 2014, a ‘Task Force on High Performance Computing’ reported to the US Department of Energy that data-centric computing will be one of the most important requirements of HPC within the next 10 years. Te report states: ‘Te need to manage, analyse, and extract useful information from the tremendous amounts of data they [HPC systems] ingest and produce becomes commensurate and co-equal in importance to their computational power.’ Te report continued: ‘Tis is the case


across much of the government research enterprise, while the emerging confluence of big data and analytics capabilities with highly sophisticated modelling and simulation is promising to have a transformational effect on a number of major industries.’ Commercially, data-centric computing is already having an effect on enterprise


markets not traditionally associated with HPC, and the companies that specialise in data storage for HPC are already experiencing demand from a much wider spectrum of customers. According to Molly Rector, chief


marketing officer for Data Direct Networks: ‘Tere has been a massive increase in the use of high-performance storage solutions for enterprise markets, with particular growth in areas such as life sciences, media and finance. We [DDN] have had 180 per cent growth in the financial services market in the first half of the year, twice as much for the first half of 2014 compared to the first half of 2013.’ She continued: ‘Cloud, media and


entertainment, and enterprise business unit environments are now grappling with the same massive compute and data management demands that HPC technology was designed to address.’ Genomics and financial services are


also increasingly large markets for storage companies. Rector said that genomics was probably the fastest-growing source of new customers, if not specifically among Fortune 500 companies. Xyratex, now part of Seagate, has also


seen growth in these enterprise markets. Ken Claffey, vice president of ClusterStor at Seagate, pointed out that the company had been engaging with customers from enterprise for some time, but that growth has increased dramatically. Claffey said: ‘Many of our customers in enterprise markets are looking for high-performance solutions that can deliver on price performance and scalability.’ Panasas has seen similar growth in


enterprise markets, according to Geoffery Noer, vice president of product management at Panasas. He said: ‘Te classic environment where scale-out storage was used in the scientific arena was really in the university and the government environment for big supercomputers. Even there, with the scale that some of these systems are looking at, reliability and availability are receiving renewed attention. However, the bigger trend that is happening is the adoption of scale- out storage for technical computing in the enterprise markets. Te adoption rate there has been at a serious pace over the last few years and that is continuing unabated.’ However, it is not just genomics, financial


A shelf showing the Panasas ActiveStor 16 storage 20


services, and media and entertainment companies that are benefiting from the use of large scale storage. Increasingly, Fortune 500 companies are looking to differentiate


Panasas


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