AWS spins up FSx for Lustre HDD options

AWS is adding HDD-based shared storage options to Amazon FSx for Lustre.

FSx for Lustre is an open source, parallel access file system which, AWS says, offers sub-millisecond latencies, up to hundreds of GB/sec throughput, and millions of IOPS.

AWS has now given it cheaper high-performance disk drive options alongside existing flash-based storage. The company says throughput-focused workloads such as genome analysis, financial simulations, and seismic data processing are suitable for HDD storage.

SSD storage is a better fit for workloads that require low latency. The SSD storage provides sub-millisecond latency and disk drives provide single digit (1 to 9) millisecond latency.

There are two HDD options. One has 12MB/sec throughput per TiB of capacity and the other has 40MB/sec. Both allow users to burst to six times these throughput levels.

All metadata operations use SSD storage. The HDD storage option can be helped by provisioning SSD caching to 20 per cent of the HDD capacity.

HDD operations reduce costs by up to 80 per cent and start at 2.5 cents per GB per month (in the US-East, N. Virginia Region).

HDD file systems for Lustre are available today in all regions where Amazon FSx is available.