A 2023 International Data Corporation forecast cited by JLL projected that data center storage capacity would grow from 10.1 zettabytes in 2023 to 21.0 ZB in 2027. This growth will require data centers to accommodate more storage while managing the associated space, power and processing demands.
Dell has introduced support for KIOXIA’s 245.76TB NVMe SSDs in a software-defined ObjectScale configuration. The high-density system can fit 40 of the SSDs into a 2U, or 3.5-inch, rack space.
The result is 9.83PB of raw storage capacity designed for data-intensive workloads such as AI, big data and analytics.
Storage is the new frontier in AI compute
Over the past year, AI workloads’ demand for memory has contributed to rising costs across the technology industry, with potential ripple effects for consumer products such as laptops.
This demand has pushed companies to explore new ways to reduce memory and data-access bottlenecks.
Over the last 40 years, program instructions and data have primarily been obtained from memory. The setup has been: disk to memory and then to the processor (CPU or GPU).
However, advances in disk technology (such NVMe storage) have made storage very fast that it’s now possible for processors to get data directly from the drive without needing to first place it in memory.
NVIDIA is one company that is leading this efforts via this through the Storage-Next program, whose aim is to design infrastructure “for AI workloads that demand fine-grained, high-throughput access to data sets that can grow far beyond system memory.”
Furthermore, one of the 40+ companies part of Storage-Next is KIOXIA (formerly owned by Toshiba). It’s worth noting that KIOXIA is the hardware manufacturer that Dell partnered with to deliver the earlier mentioned storage device.
The combination of innovation from leading storage vendors and AI infrastructure leaders (like NVIDIA) has enabled Dell to be able to offer this high-density storage solution for unstructured data.
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How can enterprises benefit from this new technology
The newly introduced 245TB SSD devices use the Dell ObjectScale software, which can be updated on-premise or on a Dell Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) instance.
The on-premises option can help enterprises retain greater control over where their data is stored while benefiting from higher storage density.
Additionally, Dell says that this new offering gives up to twice more efficiency compared to its closest competitor and, up to 76% in TCO savings compared to using the public cloud.
Dell’s support for KIOXIA’s 245.76TB SSD gives enterprises another option for managing the growing storage footprint of AI and data-lake workloads. Engineering and IT leaders should compare usable capacity, performance, power requirements and costs before deciding whether the configuration fits their infrastructure needs.