[Beowulf] PVFS or NFS in a Beowulf cluster?

[Reuti]

I don't see a contradiction to use both: NFS for the home directories (on some 
sort of master node with an attached hardware RAID), PVFS2 for a shared scratch 
space (in case the applications need a shared scratch space across the nodes). 
So the question is: how big are the input files, what size are the output files 
and how much scratch space is needed by the applications (local or shared)? - 
Reuti


Quoting Kumaran Rajaram <kums at VerariSoft.Com>:

> 
>    I would suggest PVFS2. It offers greater bandwidth (proportional to
> number of I/O nodes dedicated) compared to NFS. Also, you may use PVFS2
> native file interface (rather than POSIX I/O interface) which offers
> flexible parallel I/O interface for scientific workloads. Only caveat, is
> fault-tolerance support and you might need to employ either
> software/hardware RAID for disk failures and heartbeat mechanism for
> server failures. If the environment has less probability of
> server/disk/netowrk faults, then PVFS2 is a good choice for scientific
> workloads and parallel applications.
> 
> -Kums
> 
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Stavros E. Zogas wrote:
> 
> > Hi at all
> > I intend to setup a beowulf cluster(16+ nodes) for scientific
> > applications(fortran compilers) in a University department.What am i
> supposd
> > to use???PVFS or NFS for file system??
> > Stavros
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>