Secure the Data Behind Your Models
Your AI training data and your HPC outputs are your intellectual property, your competitive moat, and an increasingly high-value exfiltration target. RackTop builds the storage that delivers the performance your pipeline needs — and the access control your security and compliance teams require.
The HPC and AI storage problem
The storage requirements for AI training and HPC have outpaced what general-purpose enterprise NAS was designed for. Training a modern model means ingesting petabytes of data through thousands of GPUs, sustained, for days or weeks. HPC simulation generates outputs at rates that overwhelm traditional file systems.
The platforms that can keep up — Lustre distributions, parallel file systems, all-flash specialty appliances — were optimized for raw throughput. They were not optimized for security, access control, audit, or the realities of multi-tenant research environments.
The result is a storage layer that is fast enough but quietly insecure. Training data sits on storage with no real access control beyond shared keys. Model weights are accessible to anyone with the mount point. Audit is fragmentary or nonexistent. The data that represents your largest AI investment is also your largest unmonitored data exposure.
That problem is acceptable in some research environments. It is not acceptable in:
- ✓Commercial AI labs where the training corpus is the product
- ✓Federal AI/ML programs where the data is classified or controlled
- ✓Healthcare and life sciences AI where the data is regulated
- ✓Multi-tenant research environments sharing infrastructure across teams, projects, or partners
- ✓Any organization that has come to understand that the data behind the model is the asset most worth protecting
What BrickStor brings to HPC and AI
BrickStor SP for Lustre
Performance without the security tradeoffBrickStor SP for Lustre delivers Lustre parallel file system performance that outperforms VAST Data for workloads that require a true parallel file system. It runs the same Lustre client your data scientists already know — there is no new protocol to learn and no application changes required.
What is different is what is layered around it: native ABAC for dynamic access control, Hub Central for unified management, an immutable audit trail of every file operation, and the federal-grade engineering pedigree of a company built by U.S. Intelligence Community veterans.
For AI training teams, this means you can give your researchers the parallel file system performance they need without giving up the access control, audit, and compliance posture your CISO and legal team require.
BrickStor SP for Lustre →BrickStor SP
When NFS/S3 is the right answerNot every workload needs a parallel file system. For inference, data preparation, model serving, and the dozens of supporting workloads around the core training pipeline, NFS or S3 is faster to integrate and easier to operate. BrickStor SP delivers VAST-class performance on NFS and S3 with all-flash, plus the option for hybrid (flash + HDD) and TDM object tiering.
And uniquely, BrickStor SP and BrickStor SP for Lustre come from the same vendor and are managed from the same Hub Central console. Lustre when you need it. NFS/S3 when you don't. One platform, one management plane, one ABAC policy framework, one support relationship.
BrickStor SP →ABAC for AI training data
Attribute-Based Access Control matters in HPC and AI environments for reasons most storage vendors do not address:
Protect training data as intellectual property
ABAC enforces who can read, copy, or export the corpus, dynamically, based on user, project, role, device, and context — not by static group membership.
Multi-tenant research environments
Different teams, projects, or programs can share the same physical storage with policy-enforced separation, instead of standing up separate clusters per team.
Federal HPC and classified AI/ML
ABAC supports the access control that Department of War (DoW, formerly DoD) and IC HPC programs require, including coalition and partner-nation environments.
Regulated AI workloads
Healthcare, financial services, and other regulated industries can enforce data handling policy at the storage layer rather than in the application.
Hub Central across the AI/HPC pipeline
For an AI/HPC organization with the full pipeline — sensor capture, ingest, training, inference, and archive — Hub Central can manage:
| Pipeline Tier | BrickStor Product |
|---|---|
| Sensor or data capture | BrickStor HDR |
| Training (high-performance tier) | BrickStor SP for Lustre |
| Serving and supporting workloads | BrickStor SP (NFS/S3 tier) |
| Long-term archive | BrickStor SP (TDM tiering to object) |
| Data movement between tiers | Hub Central orchestration |
One vendor. One console. One policy framework. The pipeline runs as a managed workflow, not as four disconnected systems with shuttle scripts in between.
FAQ
- For workloads that require a true parallel file system, yes. VAST does not offer a parallel file system at all — it serves NFS and S3 only. Contact RackTop for benchmark data specific to your workload profile.
- No. RackTop offers both, from the same vendor, managed from the same console. Pair BrickStor SP for Lustre with BrickStor SP and serve whichever protocol each workload needs.
- Active Defense is a BrickStor SP capability. Customers who need active defense on data resident in the high-performance tier typically run BrickStor SP alongside SP for Lustre and let Hub Central orchestrate the protected tier.
- Yes. RackTop's federal and HPC engineering teams support migration from existing Lustre environments. Talk to an engineer for the specifics of your environment.
- Performance depends on configuration and workload. BrickStor SP for Lustre is engineered for the throughput AI training and HPC simulation require. Contact RackTop for benchmark data.
- Yes — through BrickStor CSfC Data at Rest, which supports classified data up to Top Secret and can include GPU/TPU compute at the tactical edge.
Get the performance without the security tradeoff
Talk to a RackTop HPC engineer about your specific workload and security requirements. Or request a demo and see BrickStor SP for Lustre and BrickStor SP working together from a single Hub Central console.