STORAGE

Panasas announced the company has extended its support for high-performance computing platforms by certifying the Panasas ActiveScale Storage Cluster for use with the SGI Altix family of servers. SGI Altix servers provide customers in a broad spectrum of industries with a powerful, scalable Linux cluster platform based on the Intel Itanium 2 processor. The Panasas solution is available immediately for SGI Altix servers. This announcement is the latest example of Panasas' commitment to ensuring seamless integration and support of the Panasas Storage Cluster with the industry's leading hardware, software and microprocessor platforms. This broad support enables commercial businesses to maximize their IT investments and ensure the seamless deployment and integration of storage systems. In addition, this support provides customers with the ability to more easily and cost-effectively manage heterogeneous server environments while upgrading their infrastructure to take advantage of next-generation storage systems. "Since its founding, Panasas has built upon the pioneering efforts of industry-leaders such as SGI and Intel to drive high-performance computing from its roots in academic and research settings to mainstream commercial use," said Larry Jones, vice president of marketing at Panasas. "Panasas, SGI and Intel are at the forefront of HPC innovation that's enabling commercial businesses to enhance their ability to compete, improve and streamline product development and drive better and more accurate decisions that directly impact the bottom line." The Panasas Storage Cluster is the first object-based, parallel file storage system to deliver world-record performance in both bandwidth and random I/O to accelerate the throughput of high-speed applications. The Panasas DirectFLOW protocol separates the control path from the data path, enabling high-speed, parallel data transfer between Altix nodes and Panasas StorageBlades. This process enables all nodes in the Altix system to access data simultaneously and at optimal speed. The integrated hardware/software solution is built from the ground up for ease in installation and ongoing management. SGI Altix systems deliver benchmark-setting and unparalleled scalable performance in a unified Linux platform that scales seamlessly to as many as 512 processors per cluster node under a single instance of Linux. This provides customers with long-term IT investment protection and eliminates the need for costly or frequent "forklift" upgrades. Customers benefit from the wide range of HPC applications that take advantage of the unique shared-memory architecture and open computing model of the Altix family. For example, eight of the world's leading auto manufacturers, as well as eight of the leading defense and aerospace suppliers rely on Altix systems for their high performance computing needs. "SGI is committed to helping enterprise and research organizations benefit from the advantages of high performance, parallel computing by delivering the industry's most reliable server and storage solutions," said Anneke Dempsey, senior director, Global Alliances, SGI. "We're excited to be working with Intel and Panasas to help certify that SGI Altix servers work well with the Panasas Storage Cluster. This provides our customers with even a broader range of HPC solutions to choose from in the marketplace." "Intel's Itanium processor family addresses the rigorous requirements of scientific researchers and commercial businesses across the globe," said Ben Bennett, director of Intel's world wide HPC Marketing Programs Office. "We look forward to continued work with SGI and Panasas as part of ongoing efforts at the Parallel Application Center opened last year to help users optimize application scalability and performance on Itanium 2 processor-based Altix systems."