[Beowulf] Can one Infiniband net support MPI and a parallel file system?

[John Hearns]

On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 17:25 -0400, Gus Correa wrote:
> Hello Beowulf fans
> 
> Is anybody using Infiniband to provide both
> MPI connection and parallel file system services on a Beowulf cluster?
> 
> I thought to have a storage node that would
> serve a parallel file system to the beowulf nodes over IB
> (something like a NFS on steroids).
> The same IB net would also work as the MPI interconnect.
> 
> Is this design possible?
> 

Yes - just look at the fastest cluster in the world, Roadrunner.
It uses Infiniband to access the Panasas parallel file system. In that
architecture there are storage routers between the Infiniband and the
Panasas.

I'd imagine that TACC Ranger runs Lustre over Infiniband.