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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>Arvind,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>I think you should
try some thing like Terragrid, Terragrid uses a cache coherent implementation
of iSCSI, to make a standard Linux filesystem behave as a parallel filesystem. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>The advantages this
brings are:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><font size=2 color=black
face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;
color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt;text-indent:-36.0pt'><font size=2
color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Helvetica;color:black'>1.</span></font><font size=1 color=black face=Helvetica><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:7.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>
</span></font><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>Standard Linux
filesystem, and tools, so no re-training<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>2.</span></font><font
size=1 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:7.0pt;
font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>
</span></font><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>Small code base of
only 40,000 lines of c, which means easy to support software<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>3.</span></font><font
size=1 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:7.0pt;
font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>
</span></font><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>Unlike, PVFS, GFS,
Lustre etc, TerraGrid does not use a Meta Data Controller, so scales linearly.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>4.</span></font><font
size=1 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:7.0pt;
font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>
</span></font><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>TerraGrid is the
only CFS solution with a 24X7 resilient option!<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>5.</span></font><font
size=1 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:7.0pt;
font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>
</span></font><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>“Terrabrick”,
allows you to start with one brick and expand as you need to.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>6.
Increased reliability by support for diskless
cluster nodes<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>Regards<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Helvetica><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>Imran<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'>From:</span></font></b><font size=2
face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'>
beowulf-bounces@beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-bounces@beowulf.org] <b><span
style='font-weight:bold'>On Behalf Of </span></b>ar 3107<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> 10 November 2005 05:36<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> beowulf@beowulf.org<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> [Beowulf] Question on hgh
performance, low cost Fileserver</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>We are looking into designing a low cost, high performance storage
system. Requirements as below:<br>
<br>
- Starts at 3TB, should scale up by adding more servers to say 10-12TB<br>
- Use commodity technologies (x86_64, IB, GE, Linux), preferably all <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">OSS</st1:place></st1:City> components <br>
- Provide high I/O which scales with addition of storage nodes.<br>
- To be used for hosting user home dirs so reliability is important <br>
- The HPC cluster starts with 6 AMD64 nodes and is expected to scale to
1000+nodes in a year. <br>
- Preferably without FC/SAN<br>
<br>
We do have experience with IBM GPFS, PVFS (1,2), NetApps, PolyServe but not
with GFS and LUSTRE.<br>
<br>
PVFS is not reliable enough for home dirs (OK for scratch), GPFS cannot do
RAID5 like striping across nodes, needs SAN for RAID1 like mirroring (cost $$$)
, polyserve is too expensive (per CPU pricing) <br>
<br>
Is GFS or Lustre suitable for the above needs? Any other commercial slution?<br>
<br>
I would like to know the experiences and suggestions from the advanced users on
this list. <br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Arvind<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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