New All-Flash Solutions To Streamline Data Management for AI and High-Volume Workloads

As organizations grapple with the challenges of managing and processing vast amounts of unstructured data, the need for efficient and high-performance storage solutions has become increasingly apparent. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), developers, engineers, and architects are seeking ways to simplify their data management workflows and accelerate time-to-insight. Quantum, a company specializing in end-to-end data management, has recently announced a range of all-flash solutions designed to address these challenges.

DXi T-Series: Fast Backup and Recovery

One of the key products Quantum just announced is the DXi T-Series all-flash backup appliances. These compact devices provide fast and effective data protection and recovery for various environments, including core infrastructure, enterprise edge deployments, and mission-critical databases. With impressive ingest rates and restore times, the DXi T-Series is designed to minimize the impact of backup and recovery processes on development and engineering workflows.

The DXi T-Series all-flash platform achieves outstanding performance with ingest rates up to 113 terabytes per hour, providing up to 65X faster backup rates and up to 13 times faster restore times compared to competitor appliance solutions based on hard disk drives.

ActiveScale: Scalable Object Storage for Unstructured Data

Managing unstructured data at scale is a significant challenge for many organizations. The ActiveScale all-flash object storage solution is built to address this issue by providing a scalable and high-performance platform for storing and analyzing massive datasets. With the ability to scale from terabytes to exabytes, ActiveScale enables developers and data scientists to easily access and process large volumes of unstructured data, facilitating AI and ML initiatives.

Jamie Lerner, Quantum's CEO, highlighted the success of ActiveScale during the 54th IT Press Tour: "The ActiveScale business is evolving quickly. People are starting to see a lot of object stores that kind of all look the same. But this one is getting a really strong reputation for being super simple, very easy to set up, almost nothing to maintain, and it just runs for years and years and years."

Multi-Tier Architecture for Cost-Effective Data Retention

Lerner also stressed the importance of retaining all data for AI initiatives, as it can provide a competitive advantage. To support this, ActiveScale features a multi-tier architecture that includes both all-flash and tape tiers. This approach allows organizations to store data at the optimal cost and performance level, ensuring that valuable information is readily available for analysis while minimizing storage expenses.

Lerner emphasized, "If you look at how many tape cartridges you think Quantum has to manage our IT department, you would think a couple of hundred thousand, and they're completely wasted because we used to do it so high. I mean, we do backup a database where you back it up on a cartridge and then next week back into another cartridge. You could have backed up 800 of them on one cartridge, but you label the cartridges. Now we never take tape. It never comes out of active scale, and you're packing the tapes 100% like a hard drive."

Integration With AI Frameworks and High-Speed Networking

In addition to ActiveScale, Quantum has announced enhancements to its StorNext file system and Myriad high-performance storage. These solutions are designed to integrate seamlessly with popular AI frameworks such as TensorFlow and Spark. By leveraging NVMe over Fabric and high-speed networking, Quantum's solutions eliminate storage bottlenecks and accelerate AI training and inference processes.

During the presentation, Lerner discussed Quantum's commitment to integrating with AI frameworks: "We built Myriad every three weeks. Every three weeks, we're adding GPU direct SMB capabilities, the parallel agent, they're just getting drops, drops, drops. We've never had a product that we can drop every three weeks. We're adding new functionality as fast as we can, responsibly."

Simplifying Data Management With Software Ecosystem

Quantum's approach to data management extends beyond storage hardware. The company offers a comprehensive software ecosystem that simplifies data movement, tagging, and analysis. Features such as automated data placement, dynamic erasure coding, and self-healing capabilities are designed to reduce the burden on IT teams, allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks.

According to Lerner: "With bundled replication, cloud tiering, and immutable snapshots, plus a rich software ecosystem including Veeam, Veritas, and Commvault, DXi T-Series appliances seamlessly cooperate with DXi resources deployed across the edge, the core, and the cloud for end-to-end data protection."

Accelerating Key Workflows Across Industries

The all-flash solutions introduced by Quantum have the potential to accelerate key workflows across various industries. In media and entertainment, these solutions can significantly speed up rendering, visual effects, and video processing. In life sciences, researchers can benefit from faster access to massive genomic datasets, accelerating drug discovery, and personalized medicine initiatives. As data continues to grow exponentially, the need for efficient and high-performance storage solutions will only become more critical.

Lerner emphasized the impact of Quantum's solutions on various industries, "You're hearing it over and over and over — life sciences, genomics, bioinformatics, microscopy, disease modeling. We are just seeing life sciences use cases like crazy."

Conclusion

Quantum's all-flash solutions, combined with its comprehensive software ecosystem, offer developers, engineers, and architects a streamlined approach to data management in the era of AI and massive workloads. By providing high-performance, scalable storage that integrates with existing infrastructures and workflows, these solutions empower organizations to harness the full potential of their unstructured data and drive innovation. As the demand for efficient data management continues to grow, Quantum's forward-thinking approach positions the company as a key player in the end-to-end data management space.

As Lerner stated, "We are generating intellectual property that no one else has. This company was founded in the '80s and '90s on just creating and innovating, and that was lost. My hope for my legacy in this company is we’ll be seen as innovators again. I feel like the innovation engine is running full bore."