(Compute) Tip of the Day: Avere vFXT for Azure for HPC workloads now generally available

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Today's tip...

We are very excited to share the general availability (GA) of Avere vFXT for Azure. This culminates months of effort beginning when Microsoft welcomed Avere to the Azure family earlier this year. Customers can now leverage the Avere vFXT to run their high-performance applications in Azure.

 Avere vFXT for Azure provides a cloud-based cache layer for data-intensive high performance computing (HPC) tasks. By caching files close to your compute nodes, Avere vFXT speeds read times and lets you work more smoothly even at peak load. Avere vFXT works best with systems that have between 1,000 and 40,000 client cores.

 Avere vFXT can work with your existing on-premises data storage to provide Azure-based computing resources local access to active files that are stored long-term in your datacenter.

 The Avere vFXT for Azure provides a blob-backed cache in Azure as well, facilitating migration of file-based pipelines without having to re-write applications. For example, a genetic research team can load reference genome data into the blob environment, further optimizing the performance of their secondary analysis workflows.

Avere vFXT for Azure Features:

  • Addresses bottlenecks in data access: HPC environments frequently require thousands of machines running concurrent operations against a like set of data, which can induce bottlenecks at the storage level. The Avere vFXT for Azure overcomes this by caching data closest to the computing, allowing for scale-out performance by running workloads on Azure Virtual Machines. Avere vFXT creates a performance tier away from the NAS, shielding it from having to field the concurrent requests.
  • Reduces latency: The Avere vFXT for Azure can greatly lower latency by eliminating the need for frequent roundtrips between compute and on-premises or blob storage.
  • Supports high-throughput scalability: The Avere vFXT runs as a cluster of VMs, enabling very high scale and throughput. The software enables workloads to run across hundreds or thousands of virtual machines.
  • Provides flexibility: Run HPC jobs in Azure without having to worry about where the data ultimately resides. Avere vFXT provides low-latency caching access to your on-premises NFS network-attached storage (NAS) environment while you determine your longer-term data management strategy.
  • Lowers storage costs: Avere vFXT caching lowers your overall storage costs presenting only the data specifically requested by your workload. Using this approach means you don’t have to copy large amounts of data along with what is needed for the job. In addition, the Avere vFXT for Azure has no charge associated with licensing. Users costs are only for the underlying Azure assets used to run the Avere vFXT software.

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