[Beowulf] GlusterFS 1.2-BENKI (GNU Cluster File System) - Announcement

[Anand Avati]

> 
> that's odd, and indicates that the nfs config you tested was hitting 
> disk limits.  and unfortunately, that makes the comparison even less
> comprehensible.  looking at the config again, it appears that the node
> might have just a single disk, which would make the results quite 
> expected.

all tests were conducted on the same hardware. a point-to-point  (single
server, single client) write over NFS on Gig/E did not peak the link
throughput. on the same hardware and network, glusterfs write peaks the link
speed.

> >On IB - nfs works only with IPoIB, whereas glusterfs does SDP (and 
> >ib-verbs,
> >from the source repository) and is clearly way faster than NFS.
> 
> "clearly"s like that make me nervous.  to an IB enthusiast, SDP may be 
> more aesthetically pleasing, but why do you think IPoIB should be 
> noticably
> slower than SDP?

in a general sense, filesystem throughput is related to  link latency, since
applications (unless doing AIO) issue the next read/write _after_ the
current one completes. having writeback and readaheads help solve the
problem to a certain extent, but, in general for filesystems lowlatency
transports surely helps.

> lower cpu overhead, probably, but many people have no
> problem running IP at wirespeed on IB/10GE-speed wires...

none of those problems, its about latency. SDP has a lot less
latency than IPoIB.

avati


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Shaw's Principle:
        Build a system that even a fool can use,
        and only a fool will want to use it.