DDN Announces Next-Gen Reference Architectures for NVIDIA DGX BasePOD and DGX SuperPOD 

CHATSWORTH, Calif., Sept. 21, 2022 – DDN, a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and multi-cloud data management solutions, today announced its next generation of reference architectures for NVIDIA DGX BasePOD and NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD. These new AI-enabled data storage solutions enhance DDN’s position as the leader for enterprise digital transformation at scale, while simplifying by 10X the deployment and management of systems of all sizes, from proof of concept to production and expansion.

DDN deployed more than 2.5 exabytes of AI storage in 2021 and is now supporting thousands of NVIDIA DGX systems deployed around the world. DDN systems are performing in the most demanding production AI environments, from autonomous vehicles to finance, natural language processing, climate modeling, and drug discovery at massive scale. In addition, DDN has enabled smaller enterprise IT organizations to achieve significant success in their AI digital transformation initiatives.

“Our close technical and business collaboration with NVIDIA is enabling enterprises worldwide to maximize the performance of AI applications and simplify deployment for all,” said Dr. James Coomer, vice president of products, DDN. “With this next generation of reference architectures, which include DDN’s A3I AI400X2, we’re delivering significant value to customers, accelerating enterprise digital transformation programs, and providing ease of management for the most demanding data-intensive workloads.”

“Organizations modernizing their business with AI need flexible, easy-to-deploy infrastructure to address their enterprise AI challenges at any scale,” said Tony Paikeday, senior director of AI systems, NVIDIA. “Expanding on NVIDIA’s long collaboration with DDN, the next generation of DDN’s A3I built on NVIDIA DGX BasePOD provides customers with integrated AI solutions to power the success of their most innovative work.”

DDN’s A3I powered by NVIDIA DGX BasePOD is an evolution of what was previously known as NVIDIA DGX POD configurations. These new configurations increase flexibility and customer choice, while maintaining the users’ abilities to start deployments at small scales and grow their DGX cluster over time. Additionally, DDN is collaborating with NVIDIA on vertical-specific DGX BasePOD solutions tailored specifically to financial services, healthcare and life sciences, and natural language processing. Customers using these DGX BasePOD configurations will not only get integrated deployment and management, but also software tools including the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite, tuned for their specific applications in order to speed up developer success.

DDN’s A3I AI400X2 is an all-NVMe appliance designed to help customers extract the most value from their AI and analytics data sources, is proven in production at the largest scale and is the world’s most performant and efficient building block for AI infrastructures. Configurable as all-flash or hybrid, customers can build efficient scale-out AI data pools tuned to their exact performance and capacity needs. Recent enhancements to the EXAScaler Management Framework have cut deployment times for appliances from 8 minutes to under 50 seconds. This approach enables organizations to have better resource allocation predictions and allows for faster and simpler scaling, which lends to better return on investment (ROI).

The DGX BasePOD reference architectures provide customers with a proven formula for quickly acquiring, deploying and scaling AI infrastructure. With an environment optimized for AI workloads, organizations see faster time to insights and quicker ROI.

Standard configurations start as small as two NVIDIA DGX A100 systems and a single DDN AI400X2 system — and can be as large as hundreds of DGX systems and 10 AI400X2 systems. Organizations can enter at any size, and the extensible model lets them scale as needed with simple building blocks. Backed by DDN, the leader in AI data management, along with NVIDIA technology, extensive integration and performance testing, customers can rest assured that they will get the fastest path to AI innovation.

AI Drives Continued Growth for DDN and Customers

For more than 20 years, DDN has designed, developed, deployed, and optimized systems, software and storage solutions that enable enterprises, service providers, universities and government agencies to generate more value and to accelerate time to insight from their data and information, on premises and in the cloud. DDN has expanded R&D investment by 65% in the last two years, which puts it among industry leaders at 20% of revenue reinvested back into R&D. At the close of the first half, the company had 16% year-over-year growth, strongly fueled by commercial enterprise demand for optimized infrastructure for AI.

DDN at NVIDIA GTC

DDN will be presenting virtually at NVIDIA GTC, a global conference on AI and the metaverse, with the session – “Selene and Beyond: Solutions for Successful SuperPODs.” The session will focus on how DGX SuperPOD users can best manage their infrastructure even at extreme scales. It will also explore various DGX SuperPOD use cases, including how Deloitte is working with DDN to deliver a strong foundation for developers to deploy robust self-driving technology. Registration is free and open to all — click here for more information about DDN at GTC.

About DDN

DDN is the world’s largest private data storage company and the leading provider of intelligent technology and infrastructure solutions for enterprise at scale, AI and analytics, HPC, government, and academia customers. Through its DDN and Tintri divisions, the company delivers AI, data management software and hardware solutions, and unified analytics frameworks to solve complex business challenges for data-intensive, global organizations. DDN provides its enterprise customers with the most flexible, efficient and reliable data storage solutions for on-premises and multi-cloud environments at any scale. Over the last two decades, DDN has established itself as the data management provider of choice for over 11,000 enterprises, government, and public-sector customers, including many of the world’s leading financial services firms, life science organizations, manufacturing and energy companies, research facilities, and web and cloud service providers.

Source: DDN