Dell Tech’s Storage Boosts AI with Advanced Strategies

Dell Technologies is empowering customers to achieve enhanced AI and generative AI (GenAI) performance through novel advancements in enterprise data storage. These innovations are validated with the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD AI infrastructure.

Arthur Lewis, President of Infrastructure Solutions Group at Dell Technologies, emphasized the crucial role of storage performance in AI and GenAI success. Dell Technologies is committed to pushing the boundaries of storage innovation, eliminating data access bottlenecks, and providing fast, efficient, and secure access to data for diverse AI and GenAI applications.

To address the increasing demand for high-performance and efficient AI storage, Dell PowerScale, recognized as the world’s most flexible, secure, and efficient scale-out file storage system, introduces new enhancements. The PowerScale OneFS software upgrades enable companies to expedite the preparation, training, fine-tuning, and inference of AI models. The latest PowerScale all-flash storage systems, based on the latest Dell PowerEdge servers, deliver up to a 2X performance boost for streaming reads and writes.

PowerScale introduces a smart scale-out capability to enhance single compute node performance, resulting in improved GPU utilization and faster storage throughput for AI training, checkpointing, and inferencing.

Collaborating with NVIDIA, Dell ensures the validation of PowerScale for the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD. This collaboration enables customers to leverage a validated combination of NVIDIA DGX systems, Dell PowerScale storage, and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand and Spectrum Ethernet networking for faster and more efficient AI storage. Dell PowerScale is anticipated to be the first Ethernet storage solution validated on NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD.

In response to the increasing adoption of multicloud strategies, Dell offers customers the flexibility to process data where it makes the most sense for them. Dell APEX File Storage for Microsoft Azure, the latest addition to the Dell APEX Storage for Public Cloud portfolio, provides enterprise-class file performance and management capabilities in Microsoft Azure.

Furthermore, Dell APEX File Storage in AWS and Azure allows customers to leverage cloud-native AI and GenAI workflows, facilitating improved data access and movement. The collaboration with Databricks enhances this capability, offering flexibility across multicloud environments.

The planned open, modern data lakehouse solution, set to be globally available in the first half of 2024, integrates Starburst’s analytics software with Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell PowerScale, Dell ECS, and Dell ObjectScale file and object storage systems.

Key milestones for availability include:

• Dell PowerScale OneFS software enhancements (global availability this month)
• Next-generation all-flash Dell PowerScale systems and new smart scale-out feature (global availability in the first half of 2024)
• Dell PowerScale validation with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD (expected completion in the first quarter of 2024)
• Dell APEX for File Storage for Microsoft Azure (global availability in the first half of 2024)
• Dell APEX for File Storage integration with Databricks and MosaicML (available in AWS today and in Microsoft Azure in the first half of 2024)
• Dell open, modern data lakehouse solution (global availability in the first half of 2024).