The document discusses Panasas ActiveStor, a hybrid scale-out NAS solution that aims to deliver high performance storage without compromising on reliability, availability, or manageability. ActiveStor appliances use a parallel architecture to scale linearly in performance up to 150GB/s and 12PB in capacity. The latest ActiveStor 16 platform offers increased density through 6TB drives and improved director blades. It also introduces triple parity protection with RAID 6+ to increase reliability as the system scales. The solution supports various technical and enterprise workloads through multi-protocol access including high performance direct data access for Linux and standards-based NFS and SMB protocols.

1. Panasas® ActiveStor® Performance at Scale
HYBRID SCALE-OUT NAS
PANASAS MARKETING

2. 2
PANASAS OVERVIEW
§ Scale-out NAS Solutions for Enterprise and Research
• ActiveStor appliances in 5th generation
• Shipping Since 2004, with 19 patents issued (more pending)
§ Panasas Management
• Storage-focused executive management team
• Highly experienced technical team
− Dr. Garth Gibson, Founder & Chief Scientist, Author of “Berkeley RAID Paper”
§ VC Funded
• Mohr Davidow, Samsung Ventures, Intel Capital, Focus Ventures,
Centennial Ventures
Industry Recognition
Faye Pairman,
Panasas CEO
Cloud Project of
the Year
Public Sector
Storage Project
of the Year

3. 3
Life
Sciences
Genomic
Sequencing
Computa1onal
Chemistry
Molecular
Modeling
BIG DATA: DESIGN & DISCOVER
Energy
Seismic
Processing
Reservoir
Simula1on
Interpreta1on
Finance
Por=olio
Op1miza1on
Credit
Analysis
Risk
Analysis
Manufacturing
EDA
Simula1on
Fluid
Dynamics
(CFD)
Acous1c
Analysis
Op1cal
Correc1on
Structural
Mechanics
Government
Weather
Forecas1ng
University
Materials
Science
Life
Sciences
Climate
Modeling
High
Energy
Physics
Private
Clouds
Defense
Intelligence
Media
Digital
Post-­‐Produc1on
Rendering
Satellite
Imaging
Digital
Ac1ve
Archives

4. 4
PERFORMANCE = BUSINESS BENEFITS
§ Higher performance yields faster time-to-results, faster
discovery and analysis, more innovation, and deeper insights
§ Storage is the weak link in the overall performance chain
• Exceptional storage performance is necessary to accelerate workflows
• Achieving exceptional storage performance at the scale required in
technical research and enterprise environments can be a challenge
§ Legacy NAS systems can often scale capacity, but do not always
deliver performance at scale
• When workflows take longer to complete, productivity lowers in lock-step
§ ActiveStor® hybrid scale-out NAS appliance:
• Eliminates scalability and performance bottlenecks
• Accelerates time-to-results and drives exceptional aggregate mixed-workload
performance at scale

5. 5
PANASAS ACTIVESTOR PLATFORM
ActiveStor Appliance
§ Powered by PanFS storage operating system
§ 122.4TB per shelf à scales to 12PB
§ 1.5GB/s per shelf à scales to 150GB/s
Director
Blade
§ Metadata access
§ System management
Storage
Blade
§ Parallel data access
§ Advanced caching
Panasas Architecture
COMPUTE CLIENTS
CPUs = RAID ENGINES
PANASAS DIRECTFLOW
PARALLEL + SCALABLE
PANASAS ACTIVESTOR
§ Single global namespace
§ Single system to manage
§ Seamless scaling with no downtime
§ Pay as you grow
§ Linear performance scaling
§ Fast RAID rebuilds

6. 6
ARCHITECTURE OVERVIEW
Linux/Unix
Servers
Windows
Workstations
HPC Linux
Clusters
High Speed 10Gb or InfiniBand Network
NFS DirectFlow® SMB (CIFS)
PanFS® Parallel File System
ActiveStor® Hardware Platform
ActiveStor 11/12 ActiveStor 14
ActiveStor 16

7. 7
ACTIVESTOR PERFORMANCE
§ Performance Architecture
• Direct data access
• Parallel data transfer
• Flash acceleration
• Linear scalability
• Active capacity balancing
§ Exceptional Aggregate
Performance
• Small workloads
• Large workloads
• Mixed workloads
§ No Hardware RAID Bottlenecks
• Client nodes calculate per-file RAID parity
• RAID performance scales with the number
of clients accessing storage

8. 8
MULTI-PROTOCOL ACCESS
§ DirectFlow Maximizes Linux
Client Performance
• Parallel, direct I/O architecture
• Framework for pNFS standard
• Director blades scale metadata
• Storage blades scale I/O
§ NFS and SMB (CIFS) Access
• Fully supported for
heterogeneous client access
• Clients automatically balanced
across director blades
• Enterprise-grade SMB (CIFS)
implementation
§ Networking Flexibility
• 10Gb Ethernet
• InfiniBand
Panasas DirectFlow Data Path

9. 9
EFFICIENT LINEAR SCALABILITY
§ Performance does not drop off as
performance modules are added
• Seamless linear scaling by adding
storage and director blades
• No performance “brick wall” or need
for islands of storage
Efficient Scaling = Outstanding TCO at Scale
§ Effective scaling for multiple protocols
(DirectFlow, NFS, and CIFS)
§ Network resources and bandwidth
scale with the system
Performance scaling independently verified by ESG:
http://performance.panasas.com/wp-esg-web.html

10. 10
ACTIVESTOR HYBRID TECHNOLOGY FOR
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
§ Intelligent Hybrid Architecture
• Integrated multi-tier design with cache,
SSD Flash, and SATA hard drives
• Intelligently managed for maximum
performance in relation to cost
§ Large File Workloads
• Cost effective placement of large files
on SATA with performance RAID
striping for high throughput
§ Small File Workloads
• Small files reside on SSD for high
IOPS Flash performance
§ File Metadata
• Resides on SSD for increased file
system responsiveness

11. 11
ACTIVESTOR HYBRID TECHNOLOGY FOR
TECHNICAL WORKLOADS
§ Mixed Workloads Require High Bandwidth and IOPS Performance
• Even “large file, throughput workload” data sets consist predominantly of small files
§ Many Critical File System Tasks Mean Heavy Metadata Workloads
• File system directory listings, data replication / backup, object RAID rebuild
§ Intelligent Blend of SATA + Solid State Drive (SSD) Technology Ideal
• SSD is costly per terabyte but very little of it is needed
Source: Panasas analysis of file system data sets from customers and prospects (Jan-Oct 2012)

12. 12
ENTERPRISE-GRADE WINDOWS SUPPORT
§ First Scale-out NAS Solution for Technical Computing Workflows
with Fully Compliant Microsoft® Windows® Support
• Commercially licensed SMB protocol
• Comprehensive Windows client support
• High-fidelity Access Control List (ACL) support (including inheritance)
• Capable Active Directory Integration (including trusted domain support)
• Simplified manageability (single domain join)
§ Windows Plays a Significant Role in Many Workflows
• Data uploaded from Windows workstation
• Data analyzed/simulated on Linux compute cluster
• Results inspected/visualized on Windows workstation
§ Quality Windows Support a Minimum Requirement for True
Heterogeneous IT Support
• Open source Samba project insufficient
• Panasas made the investment to improve its Windows support, starting
with PanFS 5.5 (April 2014)

13. 13
NEW: ACTIVESTOR 16 WITH PANFS 6.0
§ ActiveStor 16: Platform for PanFS 6.0
• 50% higher density, leveraging HGST UltraStar®
He6 6TB drives
• Faster director blade speeds RAID rebuilds
• Flash sized for RAID 6+
§ PanFS 6.0: RAID 6+ Triple Parity Protection
• Per-file, distributed RAID 6+ overcomes limitations
of traditional RAID
• Reliability increases with scale, not decreases
• Extended File System Availability ensures business
continuity when other systems would be down
• Quickly restore specific files for disaster recovery,
not whole file system
ActiveStor 16
HGST UltraStar® He6
6TB Drive

14. 14
ACTIVESTOR 16 PLATFORM
§ 50% Increase in Density
• Hitachi HGST He6 Helium-filled 6TB drive
technology
• 240GB SSD optimized for RAID 6+
• 122.4TB per 4U shelf
§ Linear Scalability
• Field proven to 12PB and 150GB/s in a single,
global namespace
− 100 shelves, 2000 HDDs, 1000 SSDs
§ Improved Director Blade Performance
• 19% faster CPU (2.53GHz quad-core)
• 4x more cache: 48GB memory
• Improves metadata, small file and RAID rebuild
performance
§ Strong at Both Throughput and IOPS
• Ideal for large file, small file, and mixed workloads
• >13,000 random 4KB file read IOPS per shelf
• 1.5 GB/sec per shelf
ActiveStor 16
Storage Blade
240GB
SSD
CPU
8GB
Cache
6TB
HDD x2

15. 15
SUMMARY
§ IT staff in technical research and enterprise environments need
high-performance storage that is scalable, reliable, and easily
managed
§ Selecting scale-out storage usually requires compromises
• High performance computing file systems deliver performance but
compromise on reliability, availability, and ease of management
• Enterprise NAS systems deliver high reliability and availability but
compromise performance
§ Panasas ActiveStor delivers a no-compromise solution

16. 16
PANASAS® ACTIVESTOR®
“No Compromise” Hybrid Scale-Out NAS
§ High Parallel Performance
• Direct data access eliminates
traditional NAS bottlenecks
• Capacity and performance scale
linearly to 12PB and 150GB/s
• Flash accelerated hybrid architecture
§ Easy Management
• Minimal management effort at scale
• Set up or grow capacity in <10 minutes
• Single, global namespace
§ Enterprise-Grade Reliability
• Triple parity protection with RAID 6+
• Reliability increases with scale
• Extended File System Availability
ActiveStor 16

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THANK YOU
http://www.panasas.com
http://www.linkedin.com/company/panasas
http://twitter.com/#!/panasas
http://www.youtube.com/PanasasHPC