Administrator Guide

Executive summary
6 Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC PixStor Storage | Document ID
Executive summary
In High-Performance Computing (HPC), all its different components need to be balanced to keep optimal
performance and avoid bottlenecks. Evolution of compute nodes can make storage a bottleneck, that is
normally avoided by the use of Parallel File Systems (PFS) that can scale out to meet such demands. With
recent advances in storage technologies like Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) SSDs, more options are
available and added to PFS storage system.
A well-balanced storage system is required to achieve optimal performance, therefore its components like
back-end arrays, storage controllers, disk drives, IO cards, network adapters and switches must be able to
provide similar bandwidth and distribute the load among the processors and memory of the servers they use.
The PFS and supporting software must be able to balance the load on the different storage system
components distributing data among them, monitoring performance along the health of the components and
provide administration tools to manage the solution efficiently.
The PixStor solution is highly available (HA), based on Dell EMC PowerEdge 14G servers and PowerVault
ME4 storage arrays arranged in storage modules that can scale up its capacity to 8 PB of formatted storage
and can scale out to customer requirements by adding more of those modules to the required capacity. For
situations that require very high throughput, an NVMe tier can scale out performance by adding pairs of HA
nodes with NVMe devices.
The Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC PixStor Storage is a storage solution based on a well-established
parallel file system that can be geo-distributed with components that simplify administration, expand its
connectivity, add advance search capabilities, and allow access to other storage devices both on and off
premises and using cloud protocols and other enterprise protocols. This storage solution is fully supported
(hardware and software), easy-to-use, high-throughput, multi-tiered and it is offered with deployment services.