HPC User Site Census: Storage Configurations and Technologies

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Intersect360 Research surveyed the High Performance Computing (HPC) user community to complete its eleventh Site Census study. The study is a look at their
current computer system installations, storage systems, networks, middleware, and application software supporting these computer installations. This
report provides a detailed examination of HPC systems and technologies installed among responding HPC user sites. Our goal in this analysis is to provide
an overview of how HPC systems are configured, including the breadth of technologies most commonly used.

Our Site Census survey results can be found in many reports, including the following:

  • HPC System Configurations and Technologies
  • HPC System Vendors Installed
  • HPC Storage Configurations and Technologies
  • HPC Storage Vendors Installed
  • HPC Networking Technologies
  • HPC Processing Technologies (Including Accelerators)
  • HPC Operating System Installations
  • HPC Middleware and Tool Installations
  • HPC Application Installations (segmented into application domains):

    • Biosciences
    • Business: Business intelligence, analytics, pattern recognition, ERP, CRM, security, complex event processing, general business
    • Chemistry
    • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
    • Engineering: Structural analysis, electronic design automation (EDA), general engineering
    • Finance and economics
    • Geophysics
    • Physics
    • Scientific research
    • Visualization and image analysis
    • Weather modeling, climate modeling, environment modeling

Storage continues to be an important part of HPC infrastructures. This report examines technology trends and installations for both local (on-node)
and independent storage systems, including network-attached storage (NAS), direct-attached storage (DAS), storage area networks (SAN), and cloud-based
storage.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
  • TABLE OF CONTENTS
  • INTRODUCTION
  • Methodology
  • Total Responses
  • HPC STORAGE CONFIGURATIONS AND TECHNOLOGIES
  • Definitions
  • Local Storage
  • Figure 1: Amount of Local Storage on Distributed-Memory HPC Systems with Local Storage, by Year of Installation or Last Modification
  • Figure 2: Proportion of Distributed-Memory HPC Systems with Flash/SSD Local Storage, by Year of Installation or Last Modification
  • Storage Systems
  • Figure 3: Capacity of Reported HPC Storage Systems, by Year of Installation or Last Modification
  • Figure 4: Cloud as Proportion of Reported HPC Storage Systems
  • Figure 5: Type of Storage Media in Reported HPC Storage Systems
  • Figure 6: Active versus Archive Storage among Reported HPC Storage Systems
  • Figure 7: NAS versus SAN among Reported HPC Storage Systems
  • Figure 8: File, Block, and Object Orientations among Reported HPC Storage Systems