PVFS for scratch? (was Re: diskless nodes? (was Re: Xbox clusters?))

[Selva Nair]

(starting a new thread snipping off the diskless one)

On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, Troy Baer wrote:
>
> Well, there's nothing keeping you from keeping the root filesystem on NFS
> and using local disk for swap, /tmp, and /var.  We do that on our Pentium
> III and Itanium clusters, and it seems to work pretty well.  The biggest
> problem is user education ("No, 'cp file /tmp' does not copy it out to all
> the nodes in your job, use pbsdcp instead").
>
>       --Troy

Ah, that brings us back to the happy world of "diskfull nodes" !
Speaking of ease of use, PVFS spread over all the local disks
is an alternative. Is anyone using PVFS with applications
such as G98 that scratch a lot? Wonder how does it compare in
performance with NFS3 or purely local storage. Any input would
be helpful.

Thanks,

Selva