Supermicro has introduced a new class of storage servers that support E3.S Gen 5 NVMe drives. These storage servers offer up to 256TB of high-throughput, low-latency storage in a 1U enclosure, and up to half a petabyte in a 2U.
Supermicro has designed these storage servers to be used with large AI training and HPC clusters. Those workloads require that unstructured data, often in extremely large quantities, be delivered quickly to the system’s CPUs and GPUs.
To do this, Supermicro has developed a symmetrical architecture that reduces latency. It does so in 2 ways. One, by ensuring that data travels the shortest possible signal path. And two, by providing the maximum airflow over critical components, allowing them to run as fast and cool as possible.
1U and 2U for you
Supermicro’s new lineup of optimized storage systems includes 1U servers that support up to 16 hot-swap E3.S drives. An alternate configuration could be up to eight E3.S drives, plus four E3.S 2T 16.8mm bays for CMM and other emerging modular devices.
(CMM is short for Chassis Management Module. These devices provide management and control of the chassis, including basic system health, inventory information and basic recovery operations.)
The E3.S form factor calls for a short and thin NVMe SSD drive that is 76mm high, 112.75mm long, and 7.5mm thick.
In the 2U configuration, Supermicro’s servers support up to 32 hot-swap E3.S drives. A single-processor system, it support the latest 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors.
Put it all together, and you can have a standard rack that stores up to an impressive 20 petabytes of data for high-throughput NVMe over fabrics (NVMe-oF) configurations.
30TB drives coming
When new 30TB drives become available—a move expected later this year—the new Supermicro storage servers will be able to handle them. Those drives will bring the storage total to 1 petabyte in a compact 2U server.
Two storage-drive vendors working closely with Supermicro are Kioxia America and Solidigm, both of which make E3.S solid-state drives (SSDs). Kioxia has announced a 30.72TB SSD called the Kioxia CD8P Series. And Solidigm says its D5-P5336 SSD will ship in an E3.S form factor with up to 30.72TB in the first half of 2024.
The new Supermicro Petascale storage servers are shipping now in volume worldwide.
Learn more about the Supermicro E3.S Petascale All-Flash NVMe Storage Systems.