Voltaire and Panasas Deliver Industrys First High-Performance Storage Solution Using Unified Fabrics
Tue Nov 18, 9:23 AMAUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Voltaire Ltd. (NASDAQ: VOLT), a leading provider of grid backbone solutions for data centers, today announced that it is working with Panasas, the global leader in parallel storage solutions, to deliver high-performance storage solutions based on unified fabrics to customers worldwide. The companies recently completed cross-certification testing of Voltaire Grid Director™ switches and InfiniBand-to-10-Gigabit-Ethernet gateways with the Panasas ActiveStor 6000 Parallel Storage Cluster. Used together, the products can deliver full-rated throughput using an efficient unified fabric configuration that reduces overall system costs.
The Voltaire-Panasas solution enables very high performance storage access for large, scale-out cluster computing architectures using Voltaire 20 Gb/s InfiniBand switches for the server interconnect and Voltaire InfiniBand-to-10-Gigabit-Ethernet gateways to provide connectivity to the Panasas storage. The solution removes the bottlenecks typically associated with clustered storage and reduces costs because only one InfiniBand adapter is used in each server, eliminating the need to install costly 10 GbE network interface cards on all of the servers or to implement complicated “work-arounds” using servers as I/O gateways.
“Working with Voltaire, we’ve developed a really elegant storage solution for large-scale clustered environments that we’ve already begun deploying at customer sites,” said Don Grabski, director of product management, Panasas. “During our certification process, we tested the solution on a 32-node cluster and achieved very good performance results that will make a difference for application performance in real-world HPC environments. The four Panasas AS6000 module configuration with the Voltaire Grid Director switches and InfiniBand-to-10-Gigabit-Ethernet gateways are capable of read performance in excess of 2GB/second.”
Voltaire Grid Director™ switches provide high-performance 20 Gb/s InfiniBand connectivity and microsecond latencies to enable high-performance applications fully utilize distributed server, network and storage resources. Combining Voltaire switches with a Voltaire InfiniBand-to-10-Gigabit-Ethernet gateway enables line speed access from the servers to storage resources.
“The Voltaire-Panasas solution delivers compelling advancements for storage access in scale-out environments, in terms of both performance and efficiency,” said Asaf Somekh, vice president, strategic alliances, Voltaire. “By using InfiniBand as a unified fabric that delivers server and storage traffic on a single wire, customers are gaining speed and scalability for their applications while avoiding the excessive costs associated with using multiple NICs in the servers.”
Availability
High performance storage solutions from Voltaire and Panasas are available today through Voltaire’s OEM and reseller partners, and from Panasas and its partners.
About Panasas
Panasas, Inc., the global leader in parallel storage solutions, helps commercial, government and academic organizations accelerate their time to results leading to real world breakthroughs that improve people’s lives. Panasas’ high-performance storage systems enable customers to maximize the benefits of Linux clusters by eliminating the storage bottleneck created with legacy network storage technologies. Panasas ActiveStor Parallel Storage Clusters, in conjunction with the ActiveScale® Operating Environment and PanFS™ parallel file system, offer the most comprehensive portfolio of storage solutions for High Performance Computing (HPC) environments. Panasas is headquartered in Fremont, California. For more information, please visit www.panasas.com.
About Voltaire
Voltaire Ltd. (NASDAQ: VOLT) designs and develops server and storage switching and software solutions that enable high-performance grid computing within the data center. Voltaire refers to its server and storage switching and software solutions as the Voltaire Grid Backbone™. Voltaire’s products leverage InfiniBand technology and include director-class switches, multi-service switches, fixed-port configuration switches, Ethernet and Fibre Channel routers and standards-based driver and management software. Voltaire’s solutions have been sold to a wide range of end customers including governmental, research and educational organizations, as well as enterprises in the manufacturing, oil and gas, entertainment, life sciences and financial services industries.
Founded in 1997, Voltaire Ltd. is headquartered in Herzliya, Israel, and has its U.S. headquarters in Billerica, Massachusetts. More information about Voltaire is available at www.voltaire.com or by calling 1-800-865-8247.
Forward Looking Statements
Information provided in this press release may contain statements relating to current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about future events that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally relate to Voltaire's plans, objectives and expectations for future operations and are based upon management's current estimates and projections of future results or trends. Actual future results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. These factors include, but are not limited to, those discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in Voltaire’s annual report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 5, 2008. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
All product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Media:
Voltaire
Christy Lynch, +1-978-439-5407
christyl@voltaire.com
or
Investor
Relations:
CCGK Investor Relations
Ehud Helft,
+1-646-797-2868
or
Fiona Darmon, +972 54 566 3221
info@gkir.com



