Cray Sonexion Integrated Storage Systems for High Performance Computing

Balanced, Integrated Architecture Delivers Performance at Scale

The Cray Sonexion uses an innovative architecture to maximize the performance and scalability capabilities of Lustre. The core building block is the integrated Scalable Storage Unit (SSU). The SSU has two Embedded Server Modules (ESMs), each connected to all drives in the SSU through a common midplane and share a redundant high speed interconnect for failover. Each ESM has a dedicated CPU, memory, network and storage connectivity. When SSUs are added, performance scales along with the capacity. This balanced design eliminates the bottlenecks of traditional scale-out storage systems.

The Cray Sonexion systems are factory tested and come pre-installed and pre-configured fully optimized to work with Lustre, and ready for immediate deployment. This innovative high performance, high reliability storage design eliminates the traditional complexity from systems that integrate equipment from third-parties and require tuning of file system performance in a heterogeneous, multi-vendor infrastructure.

Performance and Capacity

The Cray Sonexion 1300 scale-out storage architecture maximizes the performance and capacity scaling capabilities of the Lustre file system. This integrated and modular storage solution is composed of high performance Scalable Storage Units (SSU), a Metadata Management Unit (MMU) and a network-ready rack that includes all storage and processing needs for a complete file system.

Each SSU in the Cray Sonexion system consolidates and integrates traditional block storage, network and file system components and is a balanced performance, high-capacity building block fully integrated with Lustre according to best practices. Features include dual hot spare drives and mirrored solid state disk that help accelerate file system journaling.

Each SSU can deliver 3 GB/sec, each rack can deliver 20 GB/sec and a multi-rack system can deliver up to 500 GB/sec. Each standard rack can store up to 1.5 petabytes of usable file system capacity. These numbers represent more bandwidth, capacity and file system capability per standard rack than any other Lustre implementation.

Reliability, Serviceability and Efficiency

The modular and redundant architecture of the Cray Sonexion 1300 system delivers the highest reliability and highest resiliency storage solution in the industry. The MMU module hosts the metadata and management server operations. SSU modules operate as active/active integrated server modules with redundant and independent system interconnections providing maximum reliability while delivering maximum performance. Metis™ Power Protection Technology provides further protection against unplanned outages.

The Cray Sonexion uses a (8+2) RAID6 configuration to balance performance, overhead, storage efficiency and RAID overhead. This layer also provides cache protection in the event of a power failure. When a power event occurs, the Sonexion Power Protection technology supplies reserve power to protect in-flight storage data. Additionally, the Cray Sonexion uses write intent bitmaps to aid and accelerate the recovery of RAID parity data in the event of a power failure or a downed server module.

Configuration

Configuring a Cray Sonexion storage system is as simple as selecting the number of racks, MMU and number and type of SSUs to meet individual bandwidth and useable capacity requirements. Each 42U rack comes with two InfiniBand QDR switches for linking the MMU, SSUs and Lustre clients. The rack also contains all power supplies and InfiniBand and GigE cabling and a Gigabit Ethernet switch for management system connections to individual components.