Whamcloud was established in 2010 by High-Performance Computing (HPC) experts Brent Gorda and Eric Barton when they recognized that future advances in computational performance were going to require a revolutionary advance in parallel storage. Whamcloud’s vision is to evolve the state of parallel storage by focusing strategically on high performance and cloud computing applications with demanding requirements for scalability.
Experience has shown that building a file system solution from scratch takes ten years. For a push to exascale capabilities, starting from scratch is not a feasible strategy. On the other hand, the maturity, scalability, and market acceptance of Lustre make it an excellent platform on which to build advanced capabilities.
Because Lustre is open source software, the Lustre community can leverage new developments as they become available. Meanwhile, the current stability and performance of Lustre make it attractive to the enterprise market, where the trend is toward using Big Data datasets for analytics and visualization.
Combining the founders’ vision with venture capital, Whamcloud is addressing Lustre shortcomings, such as ease-of-use, to broaden the market for providers of Lustre. We are seeking to address the needs of the Missing Middle ― businesses that could benefit from but do not yet have access to advanced modeling, simulation, and analysis resources ― while enabling a Lustre ecosystem to support hardware storage providers interested in selling into the Big Data market.
Whamcloud Founders
Brent Gorda
Chief Executive Officer
Before starting Whamcloud, Brent was Deputy of Advanced Architectures at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories from 2004-2010. Prior to 2004, Brent managed the Future Technologies Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Brent has experience founding and leading a number of startups including Bonsai Software, Inc. and MetaExchange, Inc. He has worked in the parallel and HPC computing field since 1986. He earned is BS in Computer Science from University of Alberta and completed graduate work in Computer Science at UC Davis with a focus on parallel computing.
Eric Barton
Chief Technology Officer
Eric has been focused on various aspects of architecture, design, and development and leadership of Lustre since 2002. Prior to 2002, Eric was a founding member and Director of Software Development Meiko, Ltd. for ten years and spent several years as an independent consultant focusing on programming systems for scalable, massively parallel computers. He earned his BSc in Computer Science from Edinburgh University and completed graduate work in Computer Science at California Institute of Technology with a focus on CAD and parallel processing.
Our Team
Whamcloud has assembled a team of the best in the field of parallel file systems and HPC computing. On our staff are a significant number of the original developers of Lustre, many with over ten years experience working with Lustre, along with high performance computing veterans familiar with the technologies and challenges faced by the community. Our staff is in place and ready to lead the community toward exascale storage systems.
Contact Us
Corporate Headquarters
Whamcloud, Inc.
696 San Ramon Valley Blvd.
Suite 261
Danville, CA 94526
Phone +1 925-272-9557
Email:
Boulder Office
1445 Pearl Street
Suite 201
Boulder, CO 80302