DDN EXAScaler

DDN EXAScaler is a state-of-the-art data solution designed for modern workloads, including artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). According to DataDirect Networks (DDN), the vendor, this product caters to organizations of all sizes, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises. It is utilized by data scientists, researchers, engineers, IT administrators, and organizations in healthcare, finance, energy, manufacturing, and academic research.

Key Features

Improved Data Path Efficiency with Data Reduction: DDN EXAScaler incorporates client-side compression to optimize data center efficiency. The vendor claims that this feature reduces network congestion by transferring a reduced amount of data, while minimizing the impact on client performance. It also provides the flexibility to enable or disable compression at different levels, maximizing storage capacity.

Simpler Faster At Scale Systems Management: DDN's EXAScaler Management Framework (EMF) simplifies administration tasks for AI and HPC storage administrators. Inspired by Terraform, EMF allows for refined control over large-scale storage environments, expediting deployment, upgrades, and configurations.

Balances Performance and Capacity Automatically with Hot Pools: EXAScaler's hot pools feature aims to achieve a balance between performance and cost-effectiveness, creating a unified AI data platform. According to the vendor, this feature utilizes flash storage for AI workloads, while optimizing large data pools for cost savings. It maximizes cloud resources and enables workloads to run on AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Instant Data Access with Global Management Simplicity for Innovation & Discovery: EXAScaler offers global management simplicity, ensuring instant data access to foster innovation and discovery. The vendor claims that it effectively addresses challenges related to performance, scalability, and data mobility, providing a simple and reliable solution. From edge data collection to multicloud management, EXAScaler accelerates productivity for data scientists and AI initiative leaders.

Making Cloud-Based High Performance Analytics a Reality: DDN's EXA for Cloud is a high-performance data platform designed specifically for cloud workloads. It maximizes cloud resources by allowing workloads to run in the data center on AWS, Azure, and GCP. Supported by DDN's technical expertise and support, this feature overcomes challenges related to high costs and low utilization of compute resources.

Introducing Strategem: A Policy Engine to Drive Data Automation: Strategem is a policy engine that enables fast and efficient data management, responding quickly to evolving demands. It includes features such as hyper-efficient namespace scanning, active data availability on flash, auto-tiering to optimized media, and API-driven integration with external tools. Strategem enhances data automation for AI, analytics, HPC, and other big data applications.

The New Paradigm for Data At Scale: EXAScaler retains and enhances the performance and scalability of the Lustre File System, according to the vendor. It incorporates enterprise IT deployment features, including simple CIFS/NFS access, high performance for all file types, end-to-end data protection, GPU integration, secure multi-tenancy, audit facilities, and limitless scalability. EXAScaler provides extreme, dependable performance that scales easily to hundreds of petabytes and beyond.