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SGI Modular InfiniteStorage Announced

by Lyle Smith

SGI has announced the Modular InfiniteStorage, an integrated server and storage platform designed to provide Cloud and data storage customers that provides unique flexibility, adaptability, and scalability for compute and data management applications. SGI’s single modular platform has the ability to address a wide range of storage and application needs to meet virtually any business goal with a single flexible platform.


SGI has announced the Modular InfiniteStorage, an integrated server and storage platform designed to provide Cloud and data storage customers that provides unique flexibility, adaptability, and scalability for compute and data management applications. SGI’s single modular platform has the ability to address a wide range of storage and application needs to meet virtually any business goal with a single flexible platform.

The configuration choices ensure that customers can adapt the system to meet these expanding and changing business goals. Highly dense, modular design: Up to 243 raw TB in a 4U single 19 form factor chassis.

  • Flexible deployments: Storage Server or JBOD configurations with SAS, SATA & SSD storage
  • High throughput: 6GB/s per chassis
  • Designed to meet stringent availability requirements:
    • Redundant components
    • Multiple RAID options – 0, 1, 5, 6, 10
    • Hot swap components

The InfiniteStorage has two chassis options, the SGI Modular InfiniteStorage Server (SGI MIS Server) and the SGI Modular InfinateStorage JBOD (SGI MIS JBOD). The MIS Server is integrated into 4U chassis and is available with 1 or 2 two-socket motherboards equipped with the latest LGA ES-2600 CPU.

Extreme density is achieved with the introduction of modular drive bricks. This breakthrough design enables each of the bricks to be loaded with either nine 3.5 inch SAS or SATA drives, or 18 2.5 inch SAS or SSD drives. SGI MIS Server includes eight drive bricks and two motherboards, for up to 216TB and four 1.8 to 2.9 GHz processors in a single 4U server chassis. The modularity of the system means that the same platform could be configured for extreme IOPs applications, for example, by substituting the 72 3.5-inch disk drives with 144 SSDs. For additional capacity, an SGI MS JBOD can be added, which packs nine drive bricks for up to 243TB of disk capacity into each additional 4U enclosure.

Intel Jefferson Pass Motherboard (S2600JF) Specifications:

  • CPU: Dual Socket Xeon E5-2600
  • Maximum memory: 8 LR/U/RDIMM
  • Board size: 6.42” x 17.7”
  • Ethernet: Dual GbE
  • Disk: I/O 4x ports 6 Gb/s SATA/SAS 1 or 2x ports 6 Gb/s SATA 2
  • I/O lanes available: 56 Gen3
  • I/O slots: 3x PCIe3 x 16
  • Operating System Support: Windows 2008 R2 SP1, SLES 11 SP1, RHEL 6.2, VMware certification in process
  • Network connectivity: Two onboard GbE ports per Jefferson Pass Motherboard; up to 4 PCIE cards available for additional network connectivity (2 port 10 GbE Optical or copper, 2 or 4 Port GbE, four 8Gb Fibre channel)

There are six PCIE cards per server motherboard in a single server environment, four PCI cards per server (eight in total) in a dual motherboard environment, and in a single motherboard and dual server, individual motherboards have unique part numbers.

Each drive brick can hold nine 4.5” or 2.5” 15mm drives or eighteen 2.5” 9mm drives and supports SAS, SATA, SSD drive types. It can mix in groups of 8 with the SGI MIS Sever, 9 with the SGI MIS JBOD, each group spread across multiple bricks; however, it cannot mix spinning SAS & SATA in same enclosure.

Additional high availability features include:

  • Supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10
  • Dual server motherboards (optional)
  • Hot swap disks with innovative rail system – allows enclosure movement forwards and backwards
  • Hot swap components, including power supplies
  • Redundant power (optional) and cooling
  • Remote management with IPMI support

When built into SGI’s destination rack cabinet configuration, up to 2.37 PB of capacity and up to forty discrete processors can be supplied within a single standard 19 inch rack footprint. Extreme capacity and processing density enables consolidation efforts by using less space and lowering environmental costs.

SGI MIS Server and SGI MIS JBOD are both now available for preorder from SGI. Pricing is available upon request.

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