T-Platforms: OSHD

In October, 2012 the T-Platforms company announced the conclusion of the public contract on development of the operating system of data storage (OSDS) intended for control of disk arrays as a part of supercomputers and other computing systems requiring high access rate to data.

This contract is implemented within the federal target program "Research and Development in the Priority Directions of Development of a Scientific and Technology Complex of Russia for 2007-2013". During the course of performance the project the software product allowing to improve a ratio the price/performance of storage systems to two times in comparison with the solutions existing in the market will be developed.

The developed OSHD will allow to create storage systems, using instead of expensive specialized disk controllers servers with standard architecture. Computing powers and performance of a subsystem of input-output of modern servers allow to refuse completely use of specialized hardware RAID controllers and to implement mechanisms of ensuring integrity of data at the level of software solutions. At the same time the cost of storage systems will considerably fall, and performance will remain at the level of the best world analogs.

In new OSHD the highly effective algorithms of implementation of RAID developed by the technology partner of the project the Russian company AVRORAID will be used. These algorithms economically spend computing resources of servers, allowing to recover quickly data in case of refusal of a disk without performance penalty of work of a disk system. For ensuring fault tolerance the developed OSHD will work in the cluster mode with synchronization of caches of data in RAM between two independent servers.

New OSHD will allow to manage easily disk arrays, to perform their setup and monitoring using the intuitive graphical interface. In the long term the standard servers playing a role of disk controllers can be also used for management of the file system that will allow to ask even stronger infrastructure of a storage system for supercomputers and to reduce its aggregate value.

"Thanks to this development we will be able to expand our product line due to creation of own economic and fast storage systems which will become much more profitable alternative to traditional solutions for users of high-performance computing systems of average range of performance, - Vsevolod Opanasenko, the CEO of T-Platforms company comments. – Without having lost creation of the technologies allowing to reduce the cost of storage systems at the same time in performance, is also an important step in the direction of development of systems with a performance of level of exaFLOPS".

Software solutions of AVRORAID will be used in the operating system of data storage (OSDS) intended for control of disk arrays as a part of supercomputers and other computing systems which require high access rate to data. Development of OSHD is conducted by the T-Platforms company which recently signed the relevant government contract.

This OSHD will allow to create storage systems, using instead of expensive specialized disk controllers servers with standard architecture. Computing powers and performance of a subsystem of input-output of modern servers allow to refuse completely use of specialized hardware RAID controllers and to implement mechanisms of ensuring integrity of data at the level of software solutions. At the same time the cost of storage systems will considerably fall, and performance will remain at the level of the best world analogs.

The highly effective algorithms of implementation of RAID from AVRORAID company used when developing OSHD economically spend computing resources of servers and allow to recover quickly data in case of refusal of a disk without performance penalty of work of a disk system. For ensuring fault tolerance the solution will work in the cluster mode with synchronization of caches of data in RAM between two independent servers.

Razumovsky Sergey, CEO, AVRORAID: "For us product output in the field of high-performance computing – one more proof that the mathematics of calculation and the program implementation of RAID6 executed by our command is competitive in the market of DWH. Completely Russian product AVRORA on which platform the project is implemented develops our company more than 5 years. In partnership with T-Platforms company we create the solution which will be significantly more interesting than the current offers in international market of High-performance computing".