Microsoft validates Lenovo ThinkSystem SE350 edge server for Azure Stack HCI

Microsoft and Lenovo have teamed up to validate the Lenovo ThinkSystem SE350 for Microsoft's Azure Stack HCI program. The ThinkSystem SE350 was designed and built with the unique requirements of edge servers in mind. It is versatile enough to stretch the limitations of server locations, providing a variety of connectivity and security options and can be easily managed with Lenovo XClarity Controller. 

The ThinkSystem SE350 solution has a focus on smart connectivity, business security, and manageability for the harsh environment.

The ThinkSystem SE350 is the latest workhorse for the edge. Designed and built with the unique requirements for edge servers in mind, it is versatile enough to stretch the limitations of server locations, providing a variety of connectivity and security options and is easily managed with Lenovo XClarity Controller. 

The ThinkSystem SE350 is a rugged compact-sized edge solution with a focus on smart connectivity, business security, and manageability for the harsh environment.

The ThinkSystem SE350 is an Intel Xeon D processor-based server, with a 1U height, half-width and short depth case that can go anywhere. Mount it on a wall, stack it on a shelf, or install it in a rack. This rugged edge server can handle anything from 0-55°C as well as full performance in high dust and vibration environments.

Information availability is another challenging issue for users at the edge, who require insight into their operations at all times to ensure they are making the right decisions. The ThinkSystem SE350 is designed to provide several connectivity options with wired and secure wireless Wi-Fi and LTE connection ability. This purpose-built compact server is reliable for a wide variety of edge and IoT workloads.

Azure Stack HCI solutions bring together highly virtualized compute, storage, and networking on industry-standard x86 servers and components. Combining resources in the same cluster makes it easier to deploy, manage, and scale, while managing command-line automation or Windows Admin Center.

Consumers can achieve virtual machine (VM) performance for server applications with Hyper-V, the foundational hypervisor technology of the Microsoft cloud, and Storage Spaces Direct technology with built-in support for non-volatile memory express (NVMe), persistent memory, and remote direct memory access (RDMA) networking.

EXTEN Technologies and AIC to deliver NVMe-oF storage offerings optimized for supercomputing

AIC and EXTEN Technologies have partnered to provide a dense and scalable, software-defined NVMe-oF solution with record breaking performance, advanced management, provisioning, and RAID data protection services. This disaggregated storage based on the AIC Shark server provides industry leading price performance for HPC, analytics and ML/AI applications.

The AIC Shark server is ideal for dense computation, networking, and storage scalability. Four AMD EPYC processors manage storage processing for up to 24 local NVMe drives in its 2U enclosure. The AIC Shark server is an ideal scale-up (add JBOFs) and scale-out (add servers) platform for high-bandwidth shared storage applications that have a variety of data processing requirements.

The EXTEN HyperDynamic datapath running on Shark nodes creates a powerful data processing system with less than one microsecond of software overhead. This enables blistering performance with the lowest latency available. With simple striping, the 2U system achieves bandwidth of over 80GB/s. EXTEN supports both RDMA and TCP in parallel for maximum flexibility.

The EXTEN HyperDynamic software management suite offers a single REST interface to manage a cluster of NVMe-oF targets. This allows administrators to provision and manage the AIC Shark with the simplicity of a single machine, while maintaining the shared-nothing, linear scalability of NVMe-oF block storage performance. The EXTEN management framework is standards-based which ensures future-proof compatibility. Together, EXTEN software and the AIC Shark provide a perfect framework for implementing any reconfigurable, software-defined NVMe-oF solution.

Utilizing standard MPIO and Linux drivers, the Shark solution provides a robust storage platform built on standard tools that provides fault tolerance at both the target and drive level. EXTEN software ensures high performance resilience features including mirroring and dual parity RAID within each Shark node and volume replication across nodes without using client-side resources such as CPU, memory and I/O bandwidth.

Mellanox debuts Quantum LongReach appliance, extends 100G EDR and 200G HDR InfiniBand connectivity to 10 and 40 kilometers

Mellanox Technologies introduced the Mellanox Quantum LongReach series of long-distance InfiniBand switches. Mellanox Quantum LongReach systems provide the ability to seamlessly connect remote InfiniBand data centers together, or to provide high-speed and full RDMA (remote direct memory access) connectivity between remote compute and storage infrastructures.

Based on the 200 gigabit HDR Mellanox Quantum InfiniBand switch, the LongReach solution provides up to two long-reach InfiniBand ports and eight local InfiniBand ports. The long reach ports can deliver up to 100Gb/s data throughput for distances of 10 and 40 kilometers.

With Quantum LongReach users can connect remote InfiniBand based data centers together to create a single virtual data center, effectively combining the compute power of multiple distributed data centers for higher overall performance and scalability. With LongReach, users can leverage the In-Network Computing capabilities such as the Scalable Hierarchical Aggregation and Reduction Protocol (SHARP), congestion control, enhanced telemetry and more between the multiple remote data centers.

Built with Mellanox Quantum InfiniBand switch device, the Mellanox Quantum LongReach solution provides up to 2 EDR InfiniBand long-reach ports and 8 HDR InfiniBand ports, delivering up to 100Gb/s data throughput for distances of 10 and 40 kilometers. 

Using Mellanox Quantum LongReach extends availability of InfiniBand’s high data throughput, native Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) communications and advanced routing and Mellanox Scalable Hierarchical Aggregation and Reduction Protocol (SHARP) to remote InfiniBand platforms, with a distance of 10 and 40 kilometers between them. 

Mellanox MLNX-OS chassis management software stack provides administrative tools to manage firmware, power supplies, fans, ports, and other system interfaces. Mellanox Quantum LongReach software has a GUI-based web management that provides full alarm, event history, activities log and performance monitoring for all optical modules.

Quantum LongReach systems can also be coupled with Mellanox’s Unified Fabric Manager (UFM) software for managing scale-out computing environments. UFM enables data center operators to efficiently provision, monitor and operate the modern data center fabric.

It also seamlessly migrates user applications from one data center to another to support different user demands, to provide load balancing between InfiniBand data centers, or to provide continuous compute services in cases of data-center failures, while enabling fast and efficient connectivity between remote compute and storage infrastructures, enabling fast disaster recovery and more.

“The Mellanox Quantum LongReach appliance enables native InfiniBand connectivity between remote InfiniBand-based data centers, or between data center and remote storage infrastructure, allowing users to enjoy native RDMA, in-network computing acceleration engines, congestion control and other InfiniBand technology advantages globally,” said Gilad Shainer, senior vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Our existing and new customers, who wish to expand their clusters seamlessly over local and distributed InfiniBand networks that are kilometers apart, will find Mellanox Quantum LongReach to be the best cost-effective and easily managed solution.”

The Quantum LongReach series comprises two models: MTQ8100, which delivers 100Gb/s throughput up to 10 kilometers; and MTQ8200, which delivers 100Gb/s throughput up to 40 kilometers. The products will be available in the first half of next year.