SGI Expands Support for Lustre File System

SGI (NASDAQ: SGI), a trusted leader in technical computing, today announced that it is expanding its support of the Lustre® file system to include Level 3 support, and now provides complete end-to-end coverage for its customers. Lustre is a massively parallel file system, capable of supporting compute clusters of thousands of nodes and many petabytes of storage. The addition of Level 3 support brings the SGI® Lustre® solution for scale-out computing environments to a support level equivalent to CXFS^TM, SGI’s own high-performance scale-up clustered file system.

As part of its continued investment in Lustre, SGI also recently joined OpenSFS, a non-profit mutual benefit organization dedicated to high-end open source file systems. OpenSFS will initially focus on the Lustre file system with goals to increase collaboration, communicate requirements to Lustre developers, and support a release of Lustre fashioned to the group’s needs.

"OpenSFS was designed to create a community around open-source scalable file systems, focusing on further stabilizing Lustre and extending it to serve the needs of next generation exascale machines,” said Norman Morse, OpenSFS president and CEO. "SGI’s investment in Lustre and participation in this organization is a valuable contribution to that effort.”

The increase in SGI technical support for Lustre also includes the recent introduction of Data Migration Facility (DMF) Direct Archive, which extends the power of DMF storage tier virtualization directly to Lustre and other POSIX® file systems. By opening the tiered archive environment to Lustre, DMF can be used as an archive environment for high-speed Lustre file systems. This leverages the significant cost benefits of tiered storage achievable with DMF while easing the management requirements associated with traditional archive and backup.

"Lustre is the clear choice of many of our customers who are deploying scale-out solutions built around SGI® Altix® ICE 8400 and SGI® Rackable™ servers,” said Jose Reinoso, vice president of storage engineering at SGI. "By investing resources in expanding our support model similar to what we do for scale-up environments with CXFS, SGI now provides complete end-to-end coverage for Lustre clients, enhancing our offering and providing deeper solution support.”

SGI has offered Level 1 and Level 2 support for several years. The addition of full Level 3 support now facilitates more rapid problem solving and development for SGI customers.

With its powerful scale-out capabilities, Lustre is the file system used in 15 of the top 30 supercomputers in the world. NASA Ames and many other large SGI customers in government, oil and gas, and research depend on Lustre for their scale-out needs.

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