FlashBlade integrates effortlessly with NVIDIA accelerated compute in an enterprise AI factory with clusters using Ethernet connectivity. It further enhances performance by supporting RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) communication between OVX or HGX systems and FlashBlade, ensuring low-latency data transfer. Connecting FlashBlade to a pair of NVIDIA Spectrum™ SN5600 ethernet switches follows a standard installation process that has been successfully implemented in thousands of installations worldwide.
A FlashBlade array is composed of four key components: XFM modules, chassis, blades, and DirectFlashModules (DFMs). The XFM modules aggregate all traffic from the NVIDIA Spectrum SN5600 switches to the blades, as illustrated in Figure 2.
The chassis houses the blades and associated DFMs, facilitating connectivity among the blades and to the broader network. Each blade can accommodate up to four DFMs and serves as an endpoint for client communications. Importantly, all storage provided by the DFMs is accessible to every blade within the cluster, with no file system constraints on individual blades. This architecture allows any blade in the array to access and service client requests as needed, maximizing efficiency and resource utilization.
The FlashBlade with NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory components BOM for up to 32 node HGX PCIe optimized 2-8-5-200 deployment can be found in Appendix A.
FlashBlade Network Connectivity
Aggregate network connectivity to the enterprise AI factory storage fabric is provided by dual FlashBlade XFM8400 switches, shown in Figure 2 as ports 21-28. Each XFM uplinks to the NVIDIA Spectrum SN5600 switches with eight connections each for a total of 16x400 Gb/E connections.
Aggregate data traffic connections to the array are passed to the chassis and then blades within each chassis, fully distributing all connections across all blades in the array. All blades within the array have access to all storage available across the array and can respond to any client request.