Robert Murphy from Panasas
In this video, Robert Murphy from Panasas describes the current state of the HPC storage market and how Panasas is stepping up with high performance products that deliver economical performance without risk.
According to a recent study published by Hyperion Research, total cost of ownership (TCO) now rivals performance as a top criterion for purchasing HPC storage systems. While performance still ranked first (57%), TCO tied with purchase price at 37% as the second most important consideration cited by users. This points to an important shift, as HPC storage buyers have historically given less credence to ongoing operating costs, particularly millions of dollars lost due to downtime. Almost half of the surveyed respondents experience storage system failures once a month or more, with some outages leading to downtimes that can last as long as a week. A single day of downtime costs can range from $100,000 to more than $1 million.
Can an HPC storage system deliver high performance without sacrificing reliability? Newly retooled with COTS hardware and a unique architecture, Panasas delivers surprising performance at a lower TCO than competitive solutions.
The report, commissioned by Panasas, a leader in HPC data storage solutions, surveyed data center planners and managers, storage system managers, purchasing decision-makers and key influencers, as well as users of HPC storage systems. Hyperion surveyed organizations with annual revenues from less than $5 million (USD) to more than $10 billion (USD).
A clear implication of this study is that to compete effectively, storage vendors need to deliver value far beyond the initial purchase price,” said Steve Conway, senior advisor, HPC market dynamics at Hyperion Research. “They must pay attention to the full range of buyer considerations, including reliability, cost of management, responsive support and uninterrupted application user productivity.”
In November 2019, Panasas unveiled its re-engineered PanFS parallel file system, delivered on the Panasas ActiveStor Ultra appliance. This turnkey HPC storage system maximizes performance, boosts reliability, simplifies management, and offers the lowest total cost of ownership in its class.
HPC storage buyers have come to expect downtime as the norm in HPC storage, trading off the lowest cost of acquisition for the inevitable headaches and lost productivity caused by system downtime,” said Faye Pairman, president and CEO at Panasas. “As a result, HPC storage vendors skimp on the development expenses associated with reliability, manageability and support; something we don’t do at Panasas. With the release of PanFS 8, we go beyond delivering the lowest cost of ownership that we are known for by offering our high-performance file system on commodity hardware to provide the lowest cost of acquisition as well – making the buying decision easy.”
Download the report: New Study Reveals the Importance of TCO for HPC Storage Buyers
