Tag: Testing

AI battle: NetApp & Pure

bbk31 Comment

An exciting story about Pure & NetApp comparison in Resnet AI tests that shows NetApp have…smaller numbers according to TheRegister…
https://lnkd.in/e7tr5JQ

There are a few small BUTS. Wrong numbers, hasty conclusions, and no price, you see:

  1. In NetApp wp-7267 doc there are 2 graphics with enabled and disabled image distortion. FlashBlade tests show numbers only for image distortion disabled, The Register compared apples with oranges: NetApp A700 with image distortions *enabled* and FlashBlade image distortions *disabled* which mislead readers to make them thinking NetApp worse 7% to 19% than Pure while it’s 1% to 6%
  2. The comparison was for A700, not the latest High-End A800
  3. The comparison didn’t include price, which might be way more than 6% difference
  4. A700 also have both SAN & NAS, on another hand FlashBlade is only NAS solution
  5. While single FlashBlade full of 15 blades (52TB each) can scale-up to 535TB usable capacity (1.6 PB effective assuming 1:3 reduction ratio from usable space) and scale-out up to 5 chassis meaning 2.6PB (8PB effective assuming 1:3 reduction ratio from usable space) on another hand single HA A700 (2 nodes) can scale-up to 5PiB (15PiB effective assuming 1:3 reduction ratio from usable space) with x480 15TB drives and than can scale-out to 24 nodes (12 HA pares) for NAS, meaning 60PiB (180PiB effective assuming 1:3 reduction ratio from usable space). There is 20 times difference (either usable or effective space) concerning usable capacity & scalability which might be necessary for things like AI, DL, etc
    • Note that with incompressible data like images, video, audio, pre-compressed or encrypted, etc., data no noticeable storage efficiencies will be gained with both NetApp & Pure systems, therefore effective will be equal to the usable capacity
  6. Moreover, you can scale performance. The tests show us performance for one fully populated FlashBlade chassis vs. one HA pare of A700. So how will performance scale? Let’s assume 5 times with scaling-up to 5 chassis with FlashBlade or 12 times with A700.

That’s how you get a badge of yellow journalism.

 

AI NetApp vs Pure