What results are achieved when specialists in Artificial Intelligence (AI) mix cutting-edge software-defined storage (SDS) with high-performance NVMe SSDs? Things looking up. Things that are both quick and scalable.
The work done by Scan Computers International Ltd. (Scan), PEAK:AIO, and Micron Technology is the subject of this blog. The tremendous performance and capacity that many AI workloads require was built and supplied by these three businesses. Additionally, the solution needed to be within the financial reach of mid-size clients in order to be viable.
It’s possible that people outside of Europe are unfamiliar with that scan. According to the information that can be found on their website, Scan is a specialized technology partner that provides client hardware, infrastructure solutions, cloud computing, and services, all of which are performed with an intense concentration on the finer points. Their extensive in-house expertise covers a wide range of fields, including computer games, professional graphics, video editing, music creation, high speed computing, and platform design for artificial intelligence.
It all started with a competition
They were informed by Scan’s demonstrated competence with AI system design that there was simply no way that standard enterprise storage could fulfill the storage demands from the next generation of GPU-based systems. This was predicated on the fact that there is simply no way that regular enterprise storage could meet these expectations. Scan was aware of the fact that the traditional storage hardware and software that had been used in the past could not give the throughput or the scalability that ever-growing, complicated datasets and AI models require in order to function properly. Scan was aware, as a last point of consideration, that their clients place a great importance on having their data safeguarded by RAID.
Because of these demands, Scan discovered PEAK:AIO.
PEAK:AIO is a software-defined storage platform that was built from the ground up to cater to the particular requirements of AI workloads. In order to construct an artificial intelligence data server that provides the extremely low latency and tremendous bandwidth that are required to optimize GPU use, it is installed on ordinary x86 server technology.
Scan was convinced that the PEAK:AIO SDS platform would be able to assist in the construction of mid-scale GPU clusters that had their data safeguarded by RAID. Scan was also convinced that employing PEAK:AIO would be able to give superior throughput in comparison to older HDD storage systems that utilized traditional data protection methods (such as Linux MD RAID).
In light of the fact that Scan’s previous experiences had shown them that traditional storage methods would either be too slow, too difficult, or too expensive, or all three, the company decided to go with the PEAK:AIO SDS platform in order to meet the requirements for performance, scaling, and data protection.
Scan required high-performance NVMe solid-state drives (SSDs), which are an essential component that may either make or break any storage system.
Micron 9400 NVMe SSDs are the finishing touch on the system
Micron was invited to take part in a proof-of-concept performance test by Scan and PEAK:AIO as a result of the company’s proven track record as a market leader in the SSDs industry. During this test, Scan would increase the number of SSDs in order to validate the scaling of the system while expanding storage capacity to accommodate larger datasets and to feed newer GPUs.
Because the Micron 9400 SSD was created by Micron expressly for throughput-critical tasks like AI training, Scan decided to go with it as its storage solution. With a sequential read speed of 7000MB/s and a random 4KB read performance of up to 1,600,000 IOPS, the Micron 9400 SSD is available in sizes ranging from 1.2 TB1 all the way up to 30 TB1.1
A combination that has been quite fruitful
Scan was able to easily surpass its initial performance goal of 150GB/s by installing up to 24 of the 30TB Micron 9400 SSDs in the prototype small storage system that took up just 2U of space. In point of fact, testing revealed that the setup was capable of delivering more than 170 gigabytes per second of data to AI platforms.
Additionally, it was quite evident that the capacity and performance scalability that Scan’s clients want was proved by this combination. They discovered that the performance of the system with PEAK:AIO SDS (shown in blue) readily scaled when compared to systems that used older Linux MD RAID (shown in grey), as seen in the illustration below. This was the case when they added extra Micron 9400 SSDs to the system.
Read perfromance scaling by protection type. PEAK:AIO SDS and Micron 9400 SSDs.
The final word
Good things came about as a result of Scan combining their experience in AI with the state-of-the-art SDS provided by PEAK:AIO and the high-capacity, performance-focused NVMe SSDs provided by Micron. Also, items that are quick and scalable such as:
- Up to 650 terabytes of storage that is secured by RAID.
- Over 170 gigabytes per second of throughput
- Scalability of performance
Customers get exceptional AI workload capacity, performance, and scalability as a result of the collaboration between Scan, PEAK: AIO, and Micron. This marks a significant milestone in the journey toward making the benefits of AI accessible to businesses of all sizes and moving affordable AI data performance from the horizon to the data center.
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