Hyperscaling IT infrastructure may be one of the toughest challenges facing cloud service providers (CSPs) today.
The term hyperscale refers to an IT architecture’s ability to scale in response to increased demand.
Hyperscaling is tricky, in large part because demand is a constantly moving target. Without much warning, a data center’s IT demand can increase exponentially due to a myriad of factors.
That could mean a public emergency, the failure of another CSP’s infrastructure, or simply the rampant proliferation of data—a common feature of today’s AI environment.
To meet this growing demand, CSPs have a lot to manage. That includes storage measured in exabytes, AI workloads of massive complexity, and whatever hardware is needed to keep system uptime as close to 100% as possible.
The hardware alone can be a real challenge. CSPs now oversee both air- and liquid-powered cooling systems, redundant power sources, diverse networking gear, and miles of copper and fiber-optic cabling. It’s a real handful.
Design with CSPs in Mind
To help CSPs cope with this seemingly overwhelming complexity, Supermicro offers purpose-built hardware designed to tackle the world’s most demanding workloads.
Enterprise-class servers like Supermicro’s H13 and A+ server series offer CSPs powerful platforms built to handle the rigors of resource-intensive AI workloads. They’ve been designed to scale quickly and efficiently as demand and data inevitably increase.
Take the Supermicro GrandTwin. This innovative solution puts the power and flexibility of multiple independent servers in a single enclosure.
The design helps lower operating expenses by enabling shared resources, including a space-saving 2U enclosure, heavy-duty cooling system, backplane and N+1 power supplies.
To help CSPs tackle the world’s most demanding AI workloads, Supermicro offers GPU server systems. These include a massive—and massively powerful—8U eight-GPU server.
Supermicro H13 GPU servers are powered by 4th-generation AMD EPYC processors. These cutting-edge chips are engineered to help high-end applications perform better and return faster.
To make good on those lofty promises, AMD included more and faster cores, higher bandwidth to GPUs and other devices, and the ability to address vast amounts of memory.
Theory Put to Practice
Capable and reliable hardware is a vital component for every modern CSP, but it’s not the only one. IT infrastructure architects must consider not just their present data center requirements but how to build a bridge to the requirements they’ll face tomorrow.
To help build that bridge, Supermicro offers an invaluable list: 10 essential steps for scaling the CSP data center.
A few highlights include:
- Standardize and scale: Supermicro suggests CSPs standardize around a preferred configuration that offers the best compute, storage and networking capabilities.
- Plan ahead for support: To operate a sophisticated data center 24/7 is to embrace the inevitability of technical issues. IT managers can minimize disruption and downtime when some-thing goes wrong by choosing a support partner who can solve problems quickly and efficiently.
- Simplify your supply chain: Hyperscaling means maintaining the ability to move new infra-structure into place fast and without disruption. CSPs can stack the odds in their favor by choosing a partner that is ever ready to deliver solutions that are integrated, validated, and ready to work on day one.
Do More:
Hyperscaling for CSPs will be the focus of a session at the upcoming Supermicro Open Storage Summit ‘24, which streams live Aug. 13 - Aug. 29.
The CSP session, set for Aug. 20, will cover the ways in which CSPs can seamlessly scale their AI operations across thousands of GPUs while ensuring industry-leading reliability, security and compliance capabilities. The speakers will feature representatives from Supermicro, AMD, Vast Data and Solidigm.
Learn more and register now to attend the 2024 Supermicro Open Storage Summit.