BlueArc has boosted its filesystem to support faster access to file system metadata and 16 petabytes of capacity on a node or cluster.

BlueArc makes hardware-accelerated Titan and Mercury filers and these run the SiliconFS software. Version 7.0 puts file metadata onto solid state or fast SAS hard drives and the file data on slower and less expensive drives.

This means that users can get boosted file access speeds without having to put entire files in expensive solid-state or fast SAS drives. BlueArc competitor Isilon has already pulled off the same trick.

Ravi Chalaka, BlueArc's senior director of solutions and product marketing, says: "While it is a small percentage of the total file system, the number of ‘metadata’ operations is significantly greater than the ‘regular’ data operations and contributes to a larger share of the I/O overhead."

SiliconFS 7.0 also gets the ability to have 16PB of usable capacity on a single Titan node or cluster and 8PB on the smaller Mercury systems. Chalaka claims this is "the highest capacity available on a single node or cluster in the industry today".

Isilon's scale-out NAS clusters go to 10PB so BlueArc pees higher up this particular wall, particularly as it says the 16PB is net of any RAID or management overhead.

The new software has new performance reporting and monitoring functionality, and is shipping now. ®