Cutting-edge AI infrastructure needs all the performance it can get, but these environments must also be efficient and reliable. This episode of Utilizing Tech, brought to you by Solidigm, features Davide Villa of Xinnor discussing the value of modern software RAID and NVMe SSDs with Ace Stryker and Stephen Foskett. Xinnor xiRAID leverages the resources of the server, including the AVX instruction set found on modern CPUs, to combine NVMe SSDs, providing high performance and reliability inside the box. Modern servers have multiple internal drive slots, and all of these drives must be managed and protected in the event of failure. This is especially important in AI servers, since an ML training run can take weeks, amplifying the risk of failure. Software RAID can be used in many different implementations, with various file systems, including NFS and high-performance networks like InfiniBand. And it can be tuned to maximize performance for each workload. Xinnor can help customers to tune the software to maximize reliability of SSDs, especially with QLC flash, by adapting the chunk size and minimizing write amplification. Xinnor also produces a storage platform solution called xiSTORE that combines xiRAID with the Lustre FS clustered file system, which is already popular in HPC environments. Although many environments can benefit from a full-featured storage platform, others need a software RAID solution to combine NVMe SSDs for performance and reliability.
Podcast Information:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series, part of The Futurum Group. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com, on Twitter at @SFoskett, or on Mastodon at @[email protected].
Ace Stryker is the Director of Product Marketing at Solidigm. You can connect with Ace on LinkedIn and learn more about Solidigm and their AI efforts on their dedicated AI landing page or watch their AI Field Day presentations from the recent event.
Davide Villa is the Chief Revenue Officer at Xinnor. You can connect with Davide on LinkedIn and learn more about Xinnor on their website.
Learn More about Xinnor’s Products:
Thank you for listening to Utilizing Tech with Season 7 focusing on AI Data Infrastructure. If you enjoyed this discussion, please subscribe in your favorite podcast application and consider leaving us a rating and a nice review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This podcast was brought to you by Solidigm and by Tech Field Day, now part of The Futurum Group. For show notes and more episodes, head to our dedicated Utilizing Tech Website or find us on X/Twitter and Mastodon at Utilizing Tech.