[Beowulf] Gigabit switch recommendations

[Joshua Baker-LePain]

On Thu, 6 Apr 2006 at 12:06pm, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote

> I've got my new switch in hand and I've done some preliminary testing.  So 
> far, so good.  Total bandwidth between 2 hosts connected to the switch was 
> quite comparable to that of the hosts being directly connected for just about 
> all the MTUs I tested (see <http://www.duke.edu/~jlb17/tg3comp.png>).  The 
> hosts are centos 4.3 using onboard BCM5704 NICs (tg3 driver), and I tested 
> with netperf.
>
> Now I just need to get it hooked up to more hosts and really have at it.

Responding to myself one last time, I've put the switch (SMC8748L2) 
through some more testing, and I'm pretty happy with it.  I set up 
increasing numbers of node pairs firing netperf at each other, and 
compared netpipe runs as the switch load increased.  Unfortunately, node 
count limited me to 24 netperf instances (50% load only), but the switch 
didn't even blink:

http://www.duke.edu/~jlb17/np-comp.png

All that testing was done with jumbo frames.  I've put the cluster back 
into production, but if there's something in particular someone would like 
to see, let me know and I'll see if I can do it.

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University