[Beowulf] GPFS on Linux (x86)

[laytonjb at charter.net]

Craig,

> > http://www.clustermonkey.net//content/view/31/28/
> 
> The website doesn't have any real-world experience.  I would
> like to know things like 'Filesystem X has much better
> meta-data performance than Filesystem Y', or 'Don't try using
> netcdf files on Filesystem Z, because the performance will
> be awful'.
> 
> Discussions about real-world use will help users get through
> the marketing fluff to find out what is really going on.  Not
> everyone has a chance to test every single filesystem before
> choosing one.

Since I'm the author of the article let me say - I agree with you.
But let me also say that installing each of the approriate file systems would
be difficult and very time consuming. I would love to do (file systems - if
you are listening...) but I also need some hardware to do it. Any volunteers?
More over, the file systems have their preferred hardware configurations for
best performance. So a single hardware configuration may not be the most
appropriate for all of the file systems (in addition, Panasas is a combined
hardware/software solution so that make the comparison a bit more difficult).

The intent of the article is a "survey." Just a quick review of what's available,
some general "features" of the file system, perhaps how you configure it, etc.
It's not intended as a review, since, as you have pointed out, there was no
testing done.

BTW - I'm working on a revision of the article. I hope to update it a bit and
provide more technical details on the file systems.

Also, I have real world experience with several of the file systems, but  I haven't
done any comparisons on performance. I was just curious to experiment with
the file systems.

Finally, don't let my limitations hold anyone back. if anyone wants to do some
reviews/comparisons/etc. please feel free to do so and write up the results for
ClusterMonkey (shameless plug there). If you need help with the comparisons,
I'm glad to help. I'll even help write the article if you would like.

Jeff