IBM has unveiled the Elastic Storage System 3500 – a 2U storage server designed specifically for AI training workloads.
The new unit houses 24 drive bays and has a maximum raw capacity of 368TB of NVMe storage.
Making use of Spectrum Scale, IBM’s high-performance clustered file system software, the ESS 3500 can achieve up to 91GB/s of throughput.
The system is designed to "break performance barriers" for AI – with increased throughput enabling GPUs to solve AI problems faster.
The new offering can be combined with other IBM storage units – including previous entries in the ESS line. It is also compatible with non-IBM storage. Given its improvements to GPU output, it could be paired with Nvidia DGX A100 systems – which are GPU-focused but lack storage options.
The solution comes with Spectrum Scale installed on a pre-configured system, with updates delivered at speed through containerized software.
ESS 3500 key specs
System features
- Dual 1-socket Storage Controllers, Active/Active
- 1024 GB memory
- De-Clustered RAID supporting erasure coding schemas: 3-way replication, 4-way replication, 4+2P, 4+3P, 8+2P, 8+3P
Performance
- AMD 7642 48 core processor
- Sequential read performance up to 91GB/S
Adapters
- Four x16 PCIe Gen4 adapter slots
Drive support
- 12 or 24 NVMe SSDs (3.84TB, 7.68 TB or 15.36 TB)
Software
- ESS software 6.1.3.0
- IBM Spectrum Scale for ESS 5.1.3.1
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.4
Full specifications can be found here.
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