We primarily use the solution for our HPC projects, high-performance computing projects.
Pros
"We've found the product to be quite flexible."
Cons
"The solution is quite expensive."
In our most recent product, the ActiveStor Ultra, Panasas has developed a new approach called Dynamic Data Acceleration Technology. It uses a carefully balanced set of HDDs, SATA SSD, NVMe SSD, NVDIMM, and DRAM to provide a combination of excellent performance and low cost per terabyte.
• HDDs will provide high bandwidth data storage if they are never asked to store anything small and only asked to do large sequential transfers. Therefore, we only store large Component Objects on our low-cost HDDs.
• SATA SSDs provide cost-effective and highbandwidth storage as a result of not having any seek times, so that’s where we keep our small Component Objects.
• NVMe SSDs are built for very low latency accesses, so we store all our metadata in a database and keep that database on an NVMe SSD. Metadata accesses are very sensitive to latency, whether it is POSIX metadata for the files being stored or metadata for the internal operations of the OSD.
• An NVDIMM (a storage class memory device) is the lowest latency type of persistent storage device available, and we use one to store our transaction logs: user data and metadata being written by the application to the OSD, plus our internal metadata. That allows PanFS to provide very low latency commits back to the application.
• We use the DRAM in each OSD as an extremely low latency cache of the most recently read or written data and metadata.
To gain the most benefit from the SATA SSD’s performance, we try to keep the SATA SSD about 80% full. If it falls below that, we will (transparently and in the background) pick the smallest Component Objects in the HDD pool and move them to the SSD until it is about 80% full. If the SSD is too full, we will move the largest Component Objects on the SSD to the HDD pool. Every ActiveStor Ultra Storage Node performs this optimization independently and continuously. It’s easy for an ActiveStor Ultra to pick which Component Objects to move, it just needs to look in its local NVMe-based database.
Panasas ActiveStor was previously known as ActiveStor.
We primarily use the solution for our HPC projects, high-performance computing projects.
The product has proven itself to be stable. The performance is great.
We've found the product to be quite flexible.
It is extremely easy to use.
The solution is quite expensive.
The solution could offer better support and better local support options.
I've been using the solution for more than four years at this point. It's been a while.
The stability is excellent and we've found the product's performance to be very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is very, very reliable.
We have three people using the product currently. We have clients on the solution as well.
Technical support could be better. They need to offer better local support to their customers. We're not 100% satisfied with the help they offer us.
We have two individuals that can handle deployment and maintenance. They are both engineers.
As an integrator, we can assist clients with implementation.
The solution could be cheaper. Right now, it's pricey.
We don't pay a recurring licensing fee. We just paid for the whole system, including the hardware and software, as well as support and service. It was all in one package.
We are customers and implementors.
We've been quite pleased with the solution over the years. I would give it a rating of nine out of ten overall.
I'd definitely recommend the solution to other users and companies.
