SUNNYVALE, CALIF.—A pair of new platforms is bringing Panasas’ ActiveStor scale-out NAS storage system to the next generation, per a press release. The new ActiveStor Director 100 control plane engine and ActiveStor Hybrid 100 configurable plug-and-play hardware enables users to design a storage system to double metadata performance, cut data access time and adopt new technology advancements. Also part of the solution is an updated PanFS 7.0 parallel file system and enhancements to the DirectFlow parallel data access protocol to deliver.
Panasas ASD-100
The ASD-100 is being offered by Panasas as a disaggregated director. Users can now add any number of ASD-100s to drive the level of metadata performance they need. By doubling the raw CPU power and RAM capacity, the ASD-100 can deliver double the metadata performance on metadata intensive workflows. Based on industry standard hardware, the ASD-100 has capabilities that include managing metadata, the global namespace and acting as a gateway for standard data access protocols. It also uses NVDIMMs to store metadata transition logs.
The ASH-100 is a hardware platform that features HDD (12 TB) and SDD (1.9 TB) in a parallel hybrid storage system. The range of HDD and SDD capacities can be paired as needed. The ASH-100 can be configured with ASD-100s or can be delivered with integrated traditional ActiveStor Director Blades.
The latest version of the PanFS 7.0 plug-and-play file system features an updated FreeBSD operating foundation and a dynamic GUI that supports asynchronous “push” notification of system changes without user interaction.
Also new, the DirectFlow parallel data access protocol offers a 15 percent increase in throughput via enhancements to memory allocation and readahead.
Panasas is now shipping the ASH-100, with the ASD-100 and PanFS 7.0 becoming available in Q1 2018.
