NetApp Storage

All Cray XE6 and Cray XK7 series systems require RAID storage. Cray offers and supports NetApp E2600, E5400 and E7900 controllers for two types of RAID subsystems – System RAID and File System RAID. The NetApp E2600 and E5400 controllers employ state of the art 6Gb SAS technology to communicate with back end disk drive arrays.

System RAID stores the boot image and system files. NetApp E2600 RAID subsystems in 2U 12-bay 3.5" disk enclosures function as a dedicated system RAID, or a combination of system RAID and File system RAID. Serial ATA (SATA) and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk options are available for E2600 with either 6Gb SAS or 8Gb Fibre Channel host interfaces.

File system RAID subsystems use the Lustre file system. Lustre offers high performance scalable parallel I/O capabilities, POSIX semantics, and scalable metadata access. NetApp E2600 or E5400 RAID subsystems can be used as block storage devices for metadata and object data in either directly attached or externally attached Lustre file system configurations. The E2600 and E5400 are Storage Bridge Bay (SBB) canisters that can be housed in 2U 12-bay 3.5" disk enclosures, 2U 24-bay 2.5" disk enclosures or 4U 60-bay 3.5" disk enclosures. Serial ATA (SATA) and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk options are available for the E2600 with either 6Gb SAS or 8Gb Fibre Channel (FC) host interfaces and for the E5400 with either 40Gb InfiniBand or 8Gb Fibre Channel host interfaces. Cray also supports Lustre file system RAIDs based on the NetApp E7900 controller. E7900 controllers employ 8Gb FC technology to communicate with back end disk drive arrays in 3U 16-bay or 4U 60-bay 3.5" enclosures.

All of the above storage subsystems are managed by the NetApp SANtricity software. Cray configures, installs and supports these NetApp block storage products to satisfy customer requirements at any scale.