Lustre Dell Storage for HPC with Intel

In High-Performance computing, the efficient delivery of data to and from the compute nodes is critical and usually implicates some complications. Researchers can generate and consume data in HPC systems at such speed that renders the storage components a bottleneck. Managing and monitoring such complex storage systems add to the burden on storage administrators and researchers. The data requirements around performance and capacity keep increasing rapidly. Increasing the throughput and scalability of storage systems supporting the high performance computing system can require a great deal of planning and configuration.

The Dell Storage for HPC with Intel Enterprise Edition for Lustre software, referred to as Dell Storage for HPC with Intel EE for Lustre for the rest of this document, is designed for academic and industry users who need to deploy a fully-supported, easy-to-use, high-throughput, scale-out, and cost-effective parallel file system storage solution. Dell Storage for HPC with Intel EE for Lustre is a scale-out storage solution appliance capable of providing a high performance and high availability storage system. Utilizing an intelligent, extensive and intuitive management interface, the Intel Manager for Lustre (IML), the solution greatly simplifies managing and monitoring all of the hardware and storage system components. It is easy to scale in capacity, performance or both, thereby providing a convenient path to grow in the future. The storage solution uses Lustre®, the leading HPC open source parallel file system1.

The storage solution utilizes the 13th generation of enterprise Dell PowerEdgeTM servers and the latest generation of high density PowerVaultTM storage products. With full hardware and software support from Dell and Intel, the Dell Storage for HPC with Intel EE for Lustre solution delivers a superior combination of performance, reliability, density, ease of use and cost-effectiveness.

The following sections of this paper will describe the Lustre File System, the Dell Storage for HPC with Intel EE for Lustre solution followed by performance analysis and conclusions. Appendix A: Benchmark Command Reference