File System Performance Record for Sandia National Laboratories

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Sandia National Laboratories, DataDirect Networks, Cluster File Systems, Inc. and Voltaire combined solutions to deliver 15 Gigabytes per second to Sandia's high performance RoSE Visualization Cluster.

The RoSE clusters are designed to visualize, analyze and manage output from two of the world's most powerful supercomputers, Red Storm and Thunderbird. These supercomputers enable simulations with extraordinary precision and fidelity, and the size of the output is enormous. Each output can be tens of terabytes in size.

"A high-performance file system solution is central to the operation of Sandia's RoSE clusters, especially for challenging tasks like interactive visualization of large simulation results," said Milt Clauser, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. "Working with DataDirect Networks, Cluster File Systems and Voltaire enabled us to achieve our goals."

In August, RoSE's high performance parallel file system solution underwent a series of tests and achieved record-setting performance exceeding 15 Gigabytes/second. Since then, the file system has been delivering solid performance in a production computing environment on the Red RoSE cluster. More About the Tests

The tests used 12 Silicon Storage Appliances (S2A 8500) from DataDirect Networks to provide high performance parallel access to 360 terabytes of SATA storage. The Lustre file system, developed by Cluster File Systems, integrated with the S2A's high speed capabilities delivered the performance record to the RoSE cluster. An InfiniBand network from Voltaire interconnected the nodes of the RoSE cluster achieving high performance by providing high bandwidth and low latency with little load on the cluster CPUs.

A new InfiniBand network abstraction layer (NAL) enabled the Lustre file system to take full advantage of the high performance network. The NAL was developed by Cluster File Systems with assistance from Voltaire and funding from the PathForward program of the Department of Energy's Office of Advanced Simulation and Computing. About DataDirect Networks, Inc.

DataDirect Networks is the world's leading provider of networked storage and clusters for HPC and Rich Media. Providing SAN, SAN/NAS convergence, and cluster solutions for Government, Research Labs, Defense, Life sciences, Broadcasting, Digital Production, Oil and Gas industries. For more information, contact DataDirect Networks at (818) 700-7600 or visit http://www.datadirectnet.com.

Look for DataDirect Networks at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle, Washington from November 14 -- 18, 2005 at Booth 713. About Cluster File Systems, Inc.

Cluster File Systems, Inc. (CFS) has quickly established itself as the recognized leader in high-performance, scalable cluster file system technology. Extensive experience, innovative insights, and proven engineering have enabled CFS to dramatically surpass the scalability limits of modern computing. The company's premier Lustre(TM) cluster file system currently powers clusters with thousands of nodes and hundreds of terabytes of data, delivering groundbreaking parallel I/O and metadata throughput on some of the world's largest Linux-based supercomputers. CFS provides Lustre technical support, training, and engineering services, and is actively working with storage and cluster vendors to develop the next generation of intelligent storage devices. The Lustre file system for Linux is Open Source software developed and maintained by CFS. For more information, see http://www.clusterfs.com

Look for Cluster File Systems, Inc at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle, Washington from November 14 - 18, 2005 at Booth 662. About Voltaire

Voltaire is the worldwide leader in grid backbone solutions for networked computing in the next generation data center. Voltaire's integrated family of switching hardware and network virtualization software delivers the high performance, intelligent backbone for grid computing architectures. Leveraging the InfiniBand standard, Voltaire solutions offer improved performance, utilization and scalability across compute clusters, storage and IP networks. Voltaire solutions are available from major systems vendors and integrators. More information about Voltaire is available at http://www.voltaire.com or by calling 1-800-865-8247.

Voltaire will demonstrate its complete portfolio of InfiniBand-based switching solutions at Supercomputing 2005 in Booth #1630. About Sandia

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness. For more information about Sandia, see http://www.sandia.gov and visit the ASC exhibit at Supercomputing 2005 in Booth #402. DataDirect Networks and Silicon Storage Appliance are trademarks of DataDirect Networks, Inc. All other names are property of their respective owners. For this press release

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