IT professionals fight a grueling battle against bottlenecks every single day, and storage is one of the most persistent adversaries. The latest generation of Serial Attached SCSI goes a long way to combat a number of the most common challenges: throughput limitations are addressed by 6 Gb/s data rates, multi-path I/O helps improve reliability, and built-in concessions for scalability simplify expansion with zero downtime. Seemingly, LSI built its SAS6160 switch to make all of that goodness available through one piece of hardware.

Functioning in much the same way as an Ethernet switch, the SAS6160 provides 16 SFF-8088 ports that accommodate 24 Gb/s per connection by aggregating four 6 Gb/s links. You drop an HBA with external SAS into a server and hook that host machine up to the switch. Then, you start attaching populated JBODs, creating massive pools of storage capacity. Zoning makes it possible to specify exactly how much of that pool each machine gets.

Performance is a big part of the story here because the switch offers 384 Gb/s of bandwidth across its 16 ports. Previously, scaling up meant cascading one JBOD after the other in a daisy chain. At a certain point, the first enclosure's data port would become the bottleneck for all of the drives down the line. That isn't a problem when each box full of disks communicates over its own independent link, though.

Each SAS6160 takes up half the width of a standard rack. So, in 1U of space, two of the switches can sit side by side, providing redundant data paths. That's the sort of functionality you simply need to have in an enterprise environment to best maximize data availability.

Asked what they consider to be fast storage, most folks would simply make reference to solid-state technology. But SSDs have come so far in the past few years that there's now a massive gulf between entry-level and performance-oriented drives. They're offered in different form factors, within a huge range of capacities, and sporting a wide variety of features.

A long-time veteran of the SSD business, OCZ Technology prides itself on an extremely diverse lineup of flash-based products. The few that it had on-hand at the Supercomputing show helped illustrate some of the designs currently in play.

OCZ's Deneva 2 drive family represented 2.5" SATA-based connectivity, though the Deneva 2 is also available in 3.5" and 1.8" form factors. Resellers have the option to buy these SSDs with SLC, eMLC, and a few types of MLC NAND flash, facilitating customization.

Talos is the company's 6 Gb/s SAS-based family, complete with dual ports, data encryption, and capacities as large as 960 GB. Though it was showing off a 3.5" model, OCZ sells the more enterprise-oriented architecture in 2.5" trim as well.

When the throughput of 6 Gb/s SAS or SATA isn't enough, dropping storage straight into a PCI Express slot is a great workaround. The Z-Drives are some of OCZ's fastest, exploiting an eight-lane slot and multiple controllers working in parallel to push 2 GB/s or more of data. The company's own SuperScale controller coordinates all of that I/O, illustrating its leadership in flash-based technology.

Red Barn Technology Group, Inc was founded in 1996 and has developed a strong dedication to High Performance/Productivity Computing over the past decade.

Redbarn specializes in Multi-Processor Systems, for adaption in Compute Clusters, Stand Alone Workstations, Servers and Storage Systems.

Their open source non-proprietary philosophy allows Redbarn to consistently provide outstanding value and quality, delivered with enthusiasm and unparalleled customer service.

There’s something to be said for a solutions-oriented approach to high-performance computing. Microway, which was founded back in 1982 to support Intel’s 8087 math co-processor, leverages its in-depth knowledge of hardware and software to build specialized machines for a number of different demanding segments.

When I met up with the company at last year’s Supercomputing show in Seattle, it was, of course, showing off its HPC-oriented NumberSmasher cluster very prominently. Composed of four, hot-swappable 2P nodes, the system is already able to accommodate Xeon E5-series processors with as many as eight cores each. The quartet of nodes can be driven from one power supply. But because the NumberSmasher includes two PSUs, you get true redundancy in the event that one fails. The power supplies are hot-swappable too. So, a replacement doesn’t have to translate to downtime.

Microway’s Brett Newman was also showing off the company’s WhisperStations—powerful single-processor platforms able to deliver commanding performance in a very small acoustic footprint. Subjected to a full load, Newman says he’s measured one of the workstations at around 40 dB. That’s incredibly quiet, and great for professionals who work right next to the systems responsible for rendering, video processing, or design work.

The message here is simple, then. From expertly-built single-user systems to innovative HPC-oriented clusters, Microway’s experience makes it easy to get your workload up and running without worrying about hardware or software configuration.