By Eric Bassier, Senior Director, Solution Marketing
Last week we announced the latest version of Hammerspace software, v5.1, and how it transforms GPU computing infrastructure by unlocking a new Tier 0 of ultra-fast shared storage.
For the first time, the local high-performance NVMe storage that is included within GPU servers can be unified with other classes of storage in a cross-platform global namespace. In this way, and without the need for proprietary client software, this underutilized ultra-low-latency local capacity can be activated as part of a multi-tier storage architecture including on-prem and remote storage from any vendor, accelerating workflows and increasing GPU utilization.
The response from the market has been amazing, including great coverage in Blocks and Files, Storage Newsletter, and many other leading industry publications.
But there are a number of other new features and capabilities that were introduced in Hammerspace v5.1, most notably the addition of a highly performant and scalable S3 object interface – so that users, applications, and compute can access data via Hammerspace using standard NFS, SMB, and S3 file and object protocols interchangeably. No copies, no proxies, just seamless, direct access to the same files/objects via any standard protocol.
This is a major enhancement to the Hammerspace Global Data Platform, unifying file and object client-side access and non-disruptive orchestration of data with the same platform that serves data with parallel file system performance to feed GPUs at unprecedented performance levels.
As it says in this excerpt from the Hammerspace S3 Interface Technical Brief:
“Data managed by Hammerspace may be stored and retrieved as files or objects, using NFS, SMB, and S3, regardless of which storage the data is on today, or moves to later. Unlike bolt-on or gateway solutions, in Hammerspace objects are truly equal peers with files. Any share or directory may be exposed as an S3 bucket, and buckets and objects created using S3 may be viewed as directories and files through standard NFS and SMB shares. Data is visible and accessible in a unified namespace via any protocol, reducing complexity instead of amplifying it. “File” and “Object” become different lenses through which data may be viewed and accessed.”
Other attributes of the S3 interface include:
- S3 objects and S3 buckets are represented 1:1 as files and directories in Hammerspace
- Any Hammerspace share or folder can now be exposed as a bucket.
- Hammerspace shares can now be presented as NFS mount points, SMB shares, and S3 buckets. Any share or directory may be exposed as an S3 bucket. Said differently, any data can now be accessed via NFS, SMB, and S3.
- Security policy is uniform across all protocols, including S3.
- Once objects are written into a Hammerspace bucket or share, you may assume that all standard functionality applies:
- Setting Objectives for data mobility and data tiering
- Concurrent file access across different protocols
- Global file system capabilities, i.e. a file can be written to a share via NFS in one site, and accessed via S3 at another site so long as permissions are set properly.
Hammerspace v5.1 Delivers Additional Features that Improve Performance, Connectivity, and Ease-of-Use
In addition to unlocking this new Tier 0 and delivering a highly performant and scalable S3 object interface, Hammerspace v5.1 introduces a number of additional new features that improve performance across a number of aspects of the product, and make Hammerspace easier-to-use.
Hammerspace v5.1 introduces significant scale and performance improvements, including making data mobility, data-in-place assimilation, and cloud-bursting about 5x faster than previous versions. Metadata performance has improved by a factor of 2x, and Hammerspace now supports even more volumes and storage systems to handle the demands of large scale environments.
And it introduces a redesigned user interface that is more dynamic, including new tile-based dashboards that may be customized per user, with richer controls. In the words of Storage Newsletter – “it looks superb.”
Time to Get Started
You can install our software on bare metal or as VMs, and it can be installed and configured in under 30 minutes.
Interested in testing out Hammerspace in your dev environment? Get Started today!
