Accelerate performance with Intel® Xeon® processors
Accelerate performance with Intel® Xeon® processors
Accelerate performance with Intel® Xeon® processors
AI moves fast. Lightning moves faster.
As AI advances rapidly, legacy file systems fall behind. Dell Lightning FS is purpose-built for speed-bypassing write caches providing direct NVMe access to accelerate training and inferencing, evolving with your infrastructure to keep you leading AI innovation.
Extreme performance
The
world’s fastest
Smarter Power
Achieves up to
4.6x lower energy costs
Engineered for the AI era
Lightning File System is a storage accelerator built for extreme AI buildouts including Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and GPU-as-a-Service providers.
Complement existing storage infrastructure with the Dell Lightning File System
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Frequently asked questions
What is the Dell Lightning File System?
The Dell Lightning File System is a software-defined, parallel file system engineered for extreme-scale AI training and inferencing. It delivers record-shattering throughput and performance density to keep GPUs fully utilized across mixed I/O profiles. Built to scale to tens of thousands of GPUs, it complements Dell PowerScale and ObjectScale in the AI storage portfolio as Tier 0, ultra-fast storage.
Who is the Dell Lightning File System for?
Dell Lightning FS targets organizations with the most demanding AI performance requirements–typically Tier 2 cloud service providers and GPU-as-a-Service platforms operating at greater than 16K GPUs or 4 TB/s aggregate throughput. Most enterprises will be best served by PowerScale and/or ObjectScale; Dell Lightning FS is reserved for environments that must maximize GPU saturation and minimize training time at extreme scale.
How is the Dell Lightning File System different from other parallel file systems?
Dell Lightning FS uses a fabric-bound architecture with direct NVMe access and redirect-on-write semantics, avoiding CPU-bound bottlenecks and write-cache dependencies common in legacy designs. This yields near line-speed efficiency on both sequential and random reads and scales predictably as clusters grow. Based on Dell internal testing, Dell Lightning FS delivers up to two times greater throughput per rack unit than competing parallel file systems (actual results may vary).
How does the Dell Lightning File System fit with PowerScale and ObjectScale?
Think of Dell Lightning FS as Tier 0, extreme-performance scratch and storage for AI training and inferencing, while PowerScale and ObjectScale serve the broader AI data lifecycle (ingest, curation, feature stores, archives). Together, they form a complete AI data pipeline—rapid data access and preparation on PowerScale and ObjectScale platforms, and extreme training and inferencing throughput on Dell Lightning FS. This portfolio approach optimizes cost, performance, and manageability.
Is the Dell Lightning File System available globally?
Yes. Dell Lightning FS is available globally, with Dell providing design, deployment, and ongoing support services to ensure success at scale. Availability and certification details may vary by region; your Dell representative can confirm specifics.
What support and services are available?
Dell offers comprehensive lifecycle services, including sizing and design, easy-button deployment, and enterprise-class support. Customers can add Dell ProSupport and ProDeploy options to streamline operations and accelerate time to value. Your Dell team will tailor a services plan to your throughput targets, GPU count, and service-level agreements (SLAs).