Long-time HPC data storage company Panasas (formed 1999) is now Vdura.
The new brand “signifies the company’s shift to a software company operating under a software subscription-based business model,” Vdura said in its announcement. The focus on software will enable the company to extend its parallel NAS technology to create what the company said is a high-performance data platform for AI and HPC applications in on-premises, hybrid and cloud-native environments, by harnessing multiple types of storage media within one architecture platform.
“The PANFS software created by Panasas has always been best in class for combining high performance with enterprise class reliability, durability and ease of use. Vdura maintains these attributes yet abandons the previous need to be tied to proprietary hardware platforms that can’t offer the range of performance and cost that customers need today,” said Ken Claffey, CEO, Vdura.
“Today’s announcement marks phase one of this transition as an Avnet Direct Connect partner,” he said, “and phase two will come later this year with plans for a major public cloud partnership. Ultimately, Vdura’s transition to a software (SaaS) model enables a broader ecosystem of hardware systems where performance meets the diverse demands of HPC and AI on any type of environment.”
Vdura said it will provide flexibility to optimize data infrastructure to meet AI and HPC application requirements.
Through its collaboration with Avnet Integrated, Vdura offers managed software across a range of supported hardware. Customers can now acquire this hardware at cost and receive it pre-configured with the Vdura software as an integrated appliance. This approach combines the benefits of software-defined storage with the deployment and management simplicity of an integrated solution. This transition, combined with plans for a public cloud partnership later this year, underscores Vdura’s strategic shift towards software and its focus on enhancing the capabilities of its Data Platform.
The company claims credit for being the first to develop both a Linux-based parallel file system and to offer file-level erasure coding, along with its defining work on pNFS, and customers include NASA, Procter & Gamble, Intel and more. Vdura said the Avnet Direct Connect partnershipe will deliver other benefits:
- Choice: Vdura customers have the freedom to leverage managed software on the broad range of hardware platforms. Whether it’s flash optimized servers, capacity optimized enclosures or cloud infrastructure, the choice is theirs.
- Customization: The ability to select preferred hardware introduces a rare level of configurability. Customers can tailor their storage solutions to match specific workloads, optimizing performance, efficiency and economics.
- Cost-Savings: By purchasing directly from the hardware manufacturer (Avnet), Vdura customers save significantly on hardware costs. This newfound control over budgets and capacity empowers IT organizations to accomplish greater goals without increasing costs.
Vdura represents the ideal fusion of Panasas’ existing customer-favored features with new advantages achievable as a software company. By applying new ways of thinking to AI and HPC infrastructures, Vdura simplifies how customers store and access vast reserves of data in real time, unlocking insights that were not possible before.
The Vdura data platform stands out from competitors because it’s a truly parallel architecture that can seamlessly integrate multiple classes of storage technology, from SSDs to HDDs, to enable the highest performance flash tier together with the lowest cost HDD tier, all within a single data platform, with advanced data protection, automated data placement and a single management plane. This model offers best-in-class performance, availability, durability and ease of use with superior economics.
“Other storage software vendors are placing all their bets on an isolated type of commodity storage media, such as flash, and then they task their customers with managing discrete capacity tiers of storage. VDURA’s approach recognizes that the price and pace of innovation in storage device commodities change over time. This means that, in order to optimize value and simplicity for the customer, data infrastructure architectures need to be adaptable and mix and match multiple storage media types,” said Claffey. “This unique level of adaptability is exactly what Vdura is offering customers, all within a single, easy-to-manage data platform that will be available for on-premises, hybrid and cloud native environments.”
Vdura simplifies customer data access, storage, and management while maintaining peak performance. With the new name, expanding team, innovative business model and enhanced capabilities, VDURA is ready to support the next wave of opportunities for our customers.
Vdura will be at ISC High Performance; The HPC Event in Hamburg, Germany on May 12-16, 2024, Booth G22.
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