DDN adds lustre to HPC storage with EXA5

DDN, the high performance computing storage vendor, has launched the fifth generation of its Lustre-based EXAScaler storage system.

Lustre is a parallel file system used in high-performance computing – in the Cray-AMD Frontier exascale supercomputer for example.

The new EXA5 system is designed for artificial intelligence applications and uses Lustre v2.12. 

DDN bought Intel’s Lustre assets in June 2018.

DDN said today the themes for the new version are simpler implementation and scaling models, easier visibility into workflows and powerful global data management features.

DDN EXA5 schematic diagram.

The EXA5 can be configured with all-NVMe flash drives or as a hybrid disk and flash system.

There are ES200NV, ES400NV, ES7990, ES14KX and ES18K models. The ES200NV,ES400NV, ES14KX and ES18KX are all flash systems, with the ES14KX and ES18KX classed as enterprise systems. The ES18K can deliver up to 90GB/sec throughput per appliance.

The ES7990 is hybrid and modular.


You can get more information about these systems from a DDN slide deck.

The EXA5 can form part of DDN’s A3I enterprise server for artificial intelligence applications.

You can download an EXA5 datasheet here.