- IBM triples system capacity to support heavier AI and supercomputing data demands
- New flash enclosure enables larger caches designed for dense multitenant cluster workloads
- Extended hardware targets operators scaling parallel processing pipelines across massive data sets
IBM has expanded the Storage Scale System 6000 to support a full rack capacity of up to 47PB following the introduction of new All-Flash expansion enclosures equipped with 122TB QLC flash drives.
This update represents a three-fold leap from previous limits and is aimed at environments that handle high-volume data operations.
The system is positioned for organizations working on supercomputing tasks, large AI pipelines and provision of cloud computing services.
Hardware built for heavier throughput
The company claims the new design can sustain workloads that rely heavily on constant throughput and high availability.
It also says the larger platform simplifies scaling for operators maintaining large clusters.
The All-Flash Expansion Enclosure provides support for larger caches, enabling multi-tenancy at multiple levels within a cluster.
IBM states that operators can run multiple data-intensive workloads without creating bottlenecks across the file system.
The chassis can accommodate up to four Nvidia BlueField-3 DPUs and twenty-six dual-port QLC flash drives in a 2U unit, enabling the system to meet requirements related to AI training, simulation workloads, and massively parallel processing.
Support for Nvidia’s Spectrum-X Ethernet switches is also included, making it possible to shorten checkpoints in model training processes.
IBM positions these hardware links as essential in environments where fast data movement is necessary to maintain active GPU fleets and complex scheduling.
IBM has updated its Storage Scale System software to accommodate the increase in total storage.
The 7.0.0 release adds support for higher capacity modules and includes wider erasure coding with a 16+2 configuration intended to improve efficiency.
Write performance has also been boosted to match the improvements in throughput and IOPS, with earlier figures from the four-rack configuration putting the system at around 2.2PB of capacity, up to 13 million IOPS and read speeds of up to 330GB per second. second.
The 2025 update raises the IOPS cap to 28 million and raises the read throughput to 340 GB per second.
These adjustments are intended to ensure that the expanded hardware does not introduce new delays as the workload scales.
The enclosure serves as a high-density option for operators who rely on an SSD layer as their primary storage base while continuing to use cloud storage for distribution beyond the core data center.
IBM says the increased volume enables its global caching layer to keep larger active data sets closer to GPUs, eliminating separate data islands and keeping pipelines stable.
The architecture is built to serve clusters that need predictable movement of information between nodes, especially in situations where CPU utilization spikes during heavy computing windows.
The company’s announcements frame the update as a triple improvement, combining higher density, better data handling and broader workload support.
That said, the long-term impact will depend on how consistently the system performs at full capacity once deployed at scale.
Via HPCWire
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