back to article Lazy parent Intel dumps Lustre assets on HPC storage bods DDN

HPC storage supplier DDN has bought Intel's Lustre file system business, including its dev teams and support contracts. Intel bought its way into the parallel file system world by gobbling Lustre developer and supporter Whamcloud in 2012. This was positioned as an aspect of Intel's ambitions to be a bigger player in super- …

  1. Korev Silver badge
    Boffin

    DDN - maybe a good place for Lustre

    I've always liked DDN as a company and also their people and products, hopefully they'll keep Opensource Lustre open and the other providers will be able to continue.

    1. HPCJohn

      Re: DDN - maybe a good place for Lustre

      Indeed. The dual support model is becoming more common.

      Look at PBSPro - they opensourced, and have a dual model of

      *) you can't justify paying for support or you do not want to? Fine! Use the open source and you will help to keep the community on a wide base and help with enthusiasm on mailing lists (etc)

      *) You want a supported product? Well here you are. And here's a number to call when you need us.

      Look at Redhat / CentOS also. I don't think that Redhat have lost much if any revenue with CentOS. They have kept many big name institutes 'in the fold' so to speak, whi were never going to spring for thousands of RHEL or Redhat Desktop licenses.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It still shocks me that these big players can spend a lot of money on a technology and then just let it idle or drop it all together. This is certainly not the worst example of that and, at least, this tech. wasn't shelved.

    1. HPCJohn

      > and, at least, this tech. wasn't shelved.

      And that's why Open Source.

      OK, this deal was for DDN to acquire personnel with skills and maintenance contracts.

      But in general having Open Source means that a project can be revived if someone thinks the effort justifies it.

      I would also mention Gridengine here.

      1. Korev Silver badge

        Sadly, both the Gridengine forks don't seem to be maintained any more. The mailing list is still active though.

        1. HPCJohn

          Korev, I agree. I was a bit hesitant to say Gridengine there.

          But the Univa variety is strongly being developed. I guess that is not Open Source.

          I ike SLurm actually.

          1. Korev Silver badge

            I think many Grid Engine shops went over to Slurm with the Oracle/Univa takeover.

  3. Mark Hahn

    I wonder if DDN has the wisdom to keep Lustre open. If they try to squeeze revenue from it, they'll just kill the project entirely...

  4. a_mu

    Altera

    Wonder how this goes with the Altera guys,

    Intel purchased them for high performance computing / data storage / array processing,

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    DDN is a storage hardware company that has significant revenue in selling storage boxes for IBM GPFS as well. In fact their hardware revenue from GPFS business use to be greater than Lustre business. So what incentive they might have in keeping Lustre competitive in long run ?

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      A very good point AC

  6. Andromeda451
    Facepalm

    Great News

    Chipzilla is a 1 trick pony. Lustre will now get proper attention without all the numbkins adding value. That's Intelspeak for "I am incompetent but I know a shiny object when I see one".

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