BlackSky Computing Announces Massively Scalable Storage Architecture Tuned for High Performance Computing Users

Apollo enterprise storage system debuts at SIGGRAPH 2011; combines extreme performance, massive scalability, power efficiency and cost effectiveness in small footprint – complements Hyperion Enterprise HPC System

Vancouver, B.C. (PRWEB) August 09, 2011

BlackSky Computing, providing leading High Performance Computing (HPC) and storage system solutions purpose-built by users for users, unveiled their new Apollo enterprise storage system for HPC at SIGGRAPH 2011 in Booth 1020.

The extreme performance and massively scalable Apollo enterprise storage system for HPC has a small, green footprint packing 180 TB in a 4U chassis which can be easily expanded to support a single file system of over 2 Petabytes with no degradation in performance. The BlackSky storage system can work with HPC data sets up to a blistering 80 Gb/s resulting in a storage system that has four times faster the I/O and one fourth the price of the leading competitors.

“We created this product because we looked for an HPC storage system for our own internal cloud and for our customers for more than a year and found nothing that satisfied all the requirements for compute intensive applications,” said Scott Alexander, co-founder and CEO, BlackSky Computing. “The only offerings with sufficient I/O were cost prohibitive because they weren't designed for high performance computing or render farms. The Apollo storage system was purpose built to deliver the three essential features for HPC storage - tremendous capacity at low $/TB; proportional network bandwidth in and out of the device which will cripple HPC applications if not done correctly; and expandability under one file system to very large volumes.”

The Apollo enterprise storage system is a fully redundant system, including two mother boards, and supports RAID 1 and 6, ensuring that if any drive fails it can be replaced without loss of data. The system also includes an easy-to-use web-based user interface that simplifies initial installation as well as future expansion. “We've seen situations both on our cloud and in customer environments in which the HPC systems were operating at just several % capacity for long periods of time because they were waiting for data from the storage array. This is where many existing solutions fail and where the BlackSky Apollo storage system will dramatically increase the ROI of the HPC environment,” added Mr. Alexander.

The Apollo enterprise storage system joins the Hyperion Enterprise HPC system in the company's purpose-built product suite. Hyperion offers blade server functionality at traditional server pricing and is able to use the latest, fastest Intel® processors. The ultra dense Hyperion design uses half the space of traditional 1U servers and is 2 to 4 times more dense than the competition, has highly efficient power supplies, and provides for plug-and-play expansion. A standard 5U rack mount chassis can support up to 10 dual Intel Xeon® X5600 series compute blades, up to 20 CPUs, 12 cores per blade (120 cores total), up to 96 GB DDR3 1333 ECC RAM per blade (960 GB total), and up to 40 Gb/s I/O per blade. Moreover, every compute blade comes with its own network adapter and power supply. If any single component fails, it affects only a single blade. Failed compute blades can be removed, repaired, and replaced without having to power down any other running blades. Together, the Hyperion and Apollo offer unparalleled performance, expandability and cost-effectiveness when combined in HPC applications that require massive computing power like rendering for visual effects and CGI, or calculating large data sets for research and development.

“We will continue to drive customer-centric innovation while further establishing our technological leadership to develop enabling high performance computing solutions to better serve our customers,” concluded Mr. Alexander.

About BlackSky Computing
BlackSky Computing is revolutionizing High Performance Computing (HPC), combining purpose-built, state-of-the-art and highly scalable computing and storage systems with unparalleled support to deliver what customers need at competitive prices – massive performance in a small footprint that can be easily expanded as requirements grow. BlackSky Computing HPC systems are also cloud ready. Founded in 2009 by seasoned HPC and IT professionals from SpaceX and PayPal, BlackSky Computing's offerings are optimized for each customer to ensure maximum performance for each application, while protecting budgets from overpriced and underutilized components. BlackSky Computing systems addresses time critical project needs requiring very large amounts of compute power and storage in a variety of industries including entertainment, aerospace/engineering, life sciences/biotechnology, academia, oil and gas exploration, finance, manufacturing, and defense research. Please visit http://www.blackskycomputing.com for more information.

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