[Beowulf] VMC - Virtual Machine Console

Fri Mar 7 10:30:11 PST 2008

My blog is here:

http://www.datawrangling.com/

I had a post last year describing launching a cluster of the small 32 bit
instances:

http://www.datawrangling.com/mpi-cluster-with-python-and-amazon-ec2-part-2-of-3.html

Since then, Amazon upgraded to 64 bit "extra-large" instances with full
gigabit ethernet which might make this feasible.  Essentially you are
getting a full physical box, where with the small instances you would be
sharing network, disk, etc.  I built a set of new Fedora images and config
scripts for the extra-large instances which include
NFS,mpich,lam,openmpi,ganglia etc.  I'd like to use a standard cluster
distribution, but it would take some hacking to get the networking to work
properly within EC2.  Amazon uses a custom firewall setup where
autodiscovery won't work, also multicast is not supported and subnets are
randomly assigned.

On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 1:18 PM, Peter St. John <peter.st.john at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Peter Sk,
> Where is the blog you mentioned (where you'll be posting followups)?
> Thanks,
> Peter St
>
> On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Peter Skomoroch <
> peter.skomoroch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm running bonnie++ on a xlarge instance right now with 30 GB files on
> > /mnt.  I'll post the results when it finishes.  I also have Ganglia set up
> > on the node, so you can check that out until I shut the instance down:
> >
> > http://ec2-72-44-53-20.compute-1.amazonaws.com/ganglia
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Peter Skomoroch <
> > peter.skomoroch at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Joe, thanks for the feedback.  The bonnie results were not actually
> > > mine, I was just pointing to some numbers run by Paul Moen.
> > >
> > > Your 1GB file data is likely more representative, but with 15 GB ram,
> > > > you need to be testing 30-60 GB files.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I'll try to tweak the BPS bonnie tests to run some large files...
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 11:57 AM, Joe Landman <
> > > landman at scalableinformatics.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Peter Skomoroch wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Extra Large Instance:
> > > > >
> > > > >       15 GB memory
> > > > >       8 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute
> > > > Units each)
> > > > >       1,690 GB instance storage (4 x 420 GB plus 10 GB root
> > > > partition)
> > > > >       64-bit platform
> > > > >       I/O Performance: High
> > > >
> > > > Note:  minor criticism, but overall, nice results.
> > > >
> > > > Looking over your bonnie results is worth a quick comment.  Any time
> > > > you
> > > > have bonnie or IOzone (or other IO benchmarks) which are testing
> > > > file
> > > > sizes less than ram size, you are not actually measuring disk IO.
> > > >  This
> > > > is cache speed pure and simple.  Either page/buffer cache, or RAID
> > > > cache, or whatever.
> > > >
> > > > We have had people tell us to our face that their 2GB file results
> > > > (on a
> > > > 16 GB RAM machine) were somehow indicative of real file performance,
> > > > when, if they walked over to the units they were testing, they would
> > > > have noticed the HD lights simply not blinking ...  Yeah, an amusing
> > > > beer story (the longer version of it), but a problem none-the-less.
> > > >
> > > > Your 1GB file data is likely more representative, but with 15 GB
> > > > ram,
> > > > you need to be testing 30-60 GB files.
> > > >
> > > > Not trying to be a marketing guy here or anything like that ... we
> > > > test
> > > > our JackRabbit units with 80GB to 1.3TB sized files.  We see
> > > > (sustained)
> > > > 750 MB/s - 1.3 GB/s in these tests.  We also note some serious
> > > > issues
> > > > with the linux buffer cache and multiple RAID controllers (buffer
> > > > cache
> > > > appears to serialize access).  We do this as we actually want to
> > > > measure
> > > > disk performance, and not buffer cache performance.
> > > >
> > > > That criticism aside, nice results.  It shows what a "cloud" can do.
> > > >
> > > > >       Price: $0.80 per instance hour
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Joseph Landman, Ph.D
> > > > Founder and CEO
> > > > Scalable Informatics LLC,
> > > > email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
> > > > web  : http://www.scalableinformatics.com
> > > >        http://jackrabbit.scalableinformatics.com
> > > > phone: +1 734 786 8423
> > > > fax  : +1 866 888 3112
> > > > cell : +1 734 612 4615
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >  --
> > > Peter N. Skomoroch
> > > peter.skomoroch at gmail.com
> > > http://www.datawrangling.com
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Peter N. Skomoroch
> > peter.skomoroch at gmail.com
> > http://www.datawrangling.com
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
>

-- 
Peter N. Skomoroch
peter.skomoroch at gmail.com
http://www.datawrangling.com
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