DataDirect Networks: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:38, 16 March 2021

Revision as of 18:55, 17 March 2021

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In February of 2021, DDN reported revenues of $400M annually and claimed 11,000 customers globally.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Mellor|first=Chris|date=2021-03-02|title=Your occasional storage digest with Arcserve, StorageCraft, DDN, and more|url=https://blocksandfiles.com/2021/03/02/enterprise-storage-news-digest-arcserve/|access-date=2021-03-04|website=Blocks and Files|language=en-GB}}</ref>

== Corporate ==

DDN operates in 20 countries worldwide with customers in over 50 countries.<ref>{{Cite news|title=About Us - DDN.com|language=en-US|work=DDN.com|url=https://www.ddn.com/company/about-us/|access-date=2021-03-17}}</ref> Following acquisitions in 2018 and 2019, the company has around 1,000 employees and has been awarded more than 150 patents. Between 2018 and 2020, DDN increased its R&D budget by 65%, with approximately two-thirds of staff in R&D and customer-facing technical roles.<ref>{{Citation|title=Alex Bouzari: Delivering Intelligent Technology and Infrastructure for a Changing World|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD6M63TOErM|language=en|access-date=2021-03-17}}</ref>

== Products ==

DDN is the leading provider of Intelligent Infrastructure products which bring simplicity, flexibility and efficiency for markets that are increasingly data-driven.<ref>{{Cite web|last=icomm|date=2021-03-12|title=Tintri drives intelligent infrastructure so you can get ready to ‘let go of the wheel’|url=https://www.itweb.co.za/content/JN1gPvOYKagMjL6m|access-date=2021-03-17|website=ITWeb|language=en}}</ref> As [[Data center management|IT operations]] have gotten more complex and the amount of available data continues to increase, DDN and its Tintri Enterprise Business unit have progressively focused on automation and analytics.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Mellor|first=Chris|date=2020-12-10|title=DDN reveals VMstore and Intelliflash updates for 2021|url=https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/12/10/ddn-product-roadmap-2021/|access-date=2021-03-17|website=Blocks and Files|language=en-GB}}</ref> DDN has rounded out its portfolio through acquisition and internal development to address the full complement of storage and data management needs with AI enablement and monitoring, cloud native deployments, and optimizations for all environments and technologies including [[Artificial intelligence|AI]], [[analytics]], [[Graphics processing unit|GPUs]], [[Central processing unit|CPUs]], [[Networking hardware|networking]], [[IT infrastructure|data center infrastructure]], [[Hardware virtualization|virtualized environments]], cloud and [[Object composition|containers]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Mellor|first=Chris|date=2020-12-10|title=DDN reveals VMstore and Intelliflash updates for 2021|url=https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/12/10/ddn-product-roadmap-2021/|access-date=2021-03-17|website=Blocks and Files|language=en-GB}}</ref>

The company carries products that provide block, parallel file and [[object storage]]. [[Block storage]] devices store data in chunks with a maximum fixed length. Parallel file systems spread the data across more than one storage device to provide redundancy and increase performance. Object file systems separate the file metadata information from the rest of the file data and store them in separate devices. The Lustre and Spectrum Scale file systems are examples of parallel file systems that are supported by some of DDN's storage systems. High speed interconnects such as [[InfiniBand]] are also supported by some of DDN's storage systems.

The company carries products that provide [[data management]], [[Network storage|NAS]], [[Block (data storage)|block]], [[Clustered file system|parallel file]] and [[object storage]].

'''<u><big>DDN At-Scale</big></u>'''

DDN’s At-Scale business unit primarily serves the AI and Analytics, Multi Cloud, Enterprise At Scale, Financial Services, Healthcare, Energy, Manufacturing, Government, Academia and High Performance Computing markets.

'''A³I Storage Solutions -''' Packaged storage solutions optimized to accelerate machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads which need to be closely coupled to GPU compute systems. For example, to support NVIDIA solutions such as [[Nvidia|NVIDIA]] DGX^TM SuperPOD and NVIDIA DGX^TM A100.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2019-12-30|title=Integrated and automated management is a key component to handling data-centric growth|url=https://www.enterpriseai.news/2019/12/30/integrated-and-automated-management-is-a-key-component-to-handling-data-centric-growth/|access-date=2021-03-17|website=EnterpriseAI|language=en-US}}</ref>

'''EXAScaler Filesystem -''' Exa5 is the latest release of the EXAScaler parallel filesystem which is optimized for high-throughput, low-latency and massive concurrency and scale. It has a shared parallel architecture that allows for linear scaling and concurrent access from AI and HPC compute systems.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Robinson|first=Daniel|date=2018-06-27|title=DDN Breathes New Life Into Lustre File System|url=https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/06/27/ddn-breathes-new-life-into-lustre-file-system/|access-date=2021-03-17|website=The Next Platform|language=en-US}}</ref>

'''SFA -''' The SFA platforms are the hardware platforms that underly the DDN file systems solutions. They are available as a block device or appliances running DDN’s filesystems in both EXAScaler and A³I configurations.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2011-09-20|title=DataDirect Unveiled Storage Fusion Architecture 10K-X|url=https://www.storagenewsletter.com/2011/09/20/datadirect-10k-x/|access-date=2021-03-17|website=StorageNewsletter|language=en-US}}</ref>

'''DataFlow''' - Software to automate synchronization, backup, archival and migration of large-scale datasets. DataFlow is used for transferring data between cloud and data centers to support AI and HPC workflows and data archiving.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Nicolas|first=Philippe|title=DataFlow, a collaboration between DDN Storage and Atempo|url=https://continuousdataprotection.blogspot.com/2018/11/dataflow-collaboration-between-ddn.html|access-date=2021-03-17|language=en-US}}</ref>

'''DDN Insight -''' A scalable monitoring solution to monitor DDN storage systems and the networks, compute systems and workloads running on them.<ref>{{Cite web|title=DDN Announces New Solutions and Next Generation Monitoring Tools|url=https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/ddn-announces-new-solutions-next-generation-monitoring-tools/|access-date=2021-03-17|website=HPCwire|language=en-US}}</ref>

'''<big><u>Tintri</u></big>'''

DDN's enterprise[[Tintri]] Enterprise business unit supplies intelligent storage infrastructure solutions for virtualization,enterprise use cases and withworkloads. Tintri products are aimed at virtualization ([[Tintri|Tintri VMstore]]), software defined unified storage, with ([[Nexenta Systems|Tintri NexentaStor]]), and all flash primary unified storage, with([[IntelliFlash|Tintri IntelliFlash]]).

'''Tintri VMStore -''' Enterprise storage and virtualization appliances with NVMe, SAS and hybrid storage options. Automated management, QoS and analytics. Typically used for virtualized enterprise applications, VDI, databases and VMware Containers.<ref>{{Cite web|title=DDN Completes $60 Million Tintri Acquisition and Enters Enterprise Virtualization Market|url=https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/ddn-completes-60-million-tintri-acquisition-and-enters-enterprise-virtualization-market/|access-date=2021-03-17|website=HPCwire|language=en-US}}</ref>

'''Intelliflash -''' IOPs-intensive and low-latency storage with NVMe and hybrid options for mission-critical applications such as image recognition, transaction processing and media streaming. Also suitable for mixed workloads including, with support for both file- and block filesystem protocols. Support for automation, analytic insights and backup to cloud storage.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Tintri IntelliFlash – Product Brief|url=https://www.evaluatorgroup.com/document/tintri-intelliflash-product-brief/|access-date=2021-03-17|website=Evaluator Group|language=en-US}}</ref>

The company also provides a storage management tool to configure and monitor DDN storage devices as well as a line of [[flash storage]] appliances. For example, DDN's Infinite Memory Engine (IME), a flash-native data cache, allows data to reside next to compute in a shared pool of non-volatile memory (NVM). In 2018, DDN introduced a line of all flash products designed to address AI and analytics workloads in GPU compute environments, known as A3I.<ref>[https://www.enterpriseai.news/2018/10/04/ddn-nvidia-blueprints-unified-ai-appliance-with-dgx-1s/]</ref>

'''NexentaStor''' - Software-Defined Storage (SDS) – software-only storage solutions, suitable for deploying on open hardware servers to support telecoms and cloud services, supporting object-, file-, and block filesystem protocols.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Feldman|first=Michael|date=2019-05-06|title=DDN Adds Nexenta to Expanding Storage Empire|url=https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/05/06/ddn-expands-storage-empire/|access-date=2021-03-17|website=The Next Platform|language=en-US}}</ref>

DDN's enterprise business unit supplies solutions for virtualization, with Tintri, software defined unified storage, with Nexenta, and all flash primary unified storage, with IntelliFlash.

==Notable awards and achievements==