[Beowulf] Bonding-alb and NAS performance

[Andrei Maslennikov]

On Tue, 5 Jul 2005, Maurice Volaski wrote:

> Hi, I saw your post below and was just wondering how you made out. For
> example, did you find out the Cisco sends back packets to the bonded
> NIC? I am preparing a setup here and we have a Cisco 6509. I am thinking
> of trying out balance-alb first because I think the server would have
> the most control, but I don't know how performance will be affected.

  Hi Maurice, 

  we have followed the advice of Jay Vosburgh, and I must say that 
  it was a right advice. We were able to get an excellent symmetric 
  throughput of 220+ MB/sec with bonding-alb and a Cisco switch.

  With 4 high-end servers totalling 8 GigE NICs we have seen the
  aggregate NAS speeds in excess of 800 MB/sec. It seems that the
  "fat" NAS servers capable to deliver 200+ MB/sec per unit may 
  soon become the platform of choice for cluster storage. 

  You may also want to check our recent presentation at HEPiX, see:

  http://hepix.fzk.de/upload/lectures/Maslennikov-storage-2005.pdf 

  Andrei.