Blending Home Cooking with Takeout: How DDN & OCI Team Up for AI Data

Think about making a meal. You could go to the grocery store, pick out every ingredient, cook it up in your kitchen, be in full control, but it's a lot of work. Or you could go to a restaurant, enjoy their food, skip having to do the dishes, but you're stuck with their menu and prices. Or maybe you order delivery for convenience, but it might show up late or cold. For businesses tackling AI, data storage feels similar: on-premises gives you control, but it's a hard task, while the cloud is easier, yet costs could overrun. No single company can solve AI alone, just like no one vendor grows, cooks, and delivers your meal. Through partnership, DDN and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) bring you DDN Infinia, like a smart kitchen that mixes your home cooking with restaurant takeout, delivering fast, easy, affordable data for AI.

The Challenge: Home Kitchen or Restaurant?

AI runs on data, and lots of it. Whether it's training models to catch fraud or powering chatbots that answer instantly, AI needs quick access to huge datasets. But companies often get stuck choosing: on-premises, like cooking at home, is fast and reliable. Cloud-based storage, like eating out, is simple and flexible, but heavy AI workloads need to scale, avoid GPU downtime, and stay cost effective. This back and forth slows projects, makes it a challenge.

The collaboration between DDN and OCI doesn't make you pick. It combines the best of both, like cooking with your own ingredients, but having a pro chef handle the hard stuff.

What DDN Infinia on OCI Delivers

DDN Infinia is like a shared kitchen where DDN's storage smarts and OCI's cloud muscle team up to serve AI data. Here's what you get:

• Blazing Fast: Infinia pushes data out quick, with tests hitting 10.6 GB per second for a single-client-to-server throughput. Your AI gets what it needs right away, keeps GPUs humming, projects moving.
• All-in-One Setup: Got spreadsheets, logs, videos? Infinia handles them in one place, like a kitchen that cooks any dish without extra tools.
• Team-Friendly: Multiple teams can use it safely together, with the system sorting out resources, no one stepping on toes.
• Grows Easy: From small tests to huge AI setups, Infinia scales smoothly, supports thousands of GPUs, tons of data.
• Locked Down: With encryption and tight access controls, it's built for industries like healthcare or finance where data rules are strict.

Proof It Works

In a joint test, DDN and OCI set up Infinia on six OCI servers in just 10 minutes, creating a 450 TB storage pool. It handled 52,000 writes and 225,000 reads per second, with data speeds nearly maxing out OCI's 100 GbE network. Compared to other clouds, it was up to 3.3 times cheaper, like getting a great meal for fast food prices ;-)

For businesses, this means faster AI training, instant chatbot replies, and lower costs by keeping GPUs busy. It's like serving a big dinner without spending all day cooking or emptying your wallet.

Keeping It Simple

Collaboration is everything, and DDN and OCI make complex tech feel easy, like following a simple recipe. DDN Infinia lets you manage data across on-premises and cloud without stress, so you can focus on building cool AI. Plans are in place to bring Infinia to edge setups in 2025, like a food truck ;-).

A New Way to Feed AI

No one company can crack AI alone, just like no single vendor grows, cooks, and delivers your meal. The partnership between DDN and OCI with Infinia blends the control of your kitchen with the ease of a restaurant, delivers fast, cheap, simple data storage for AI. It's a fresh way to keep your AI projects fed, thriving!