[Beowulf] storage server hardware considerations

[Jan Heichler]

Hallo Orion,

Mittwoch, 15. Juli 2009, meintest Du:

OP> On 07/15/2009 11:23 AM, Joe Landman wrote:
>> Orion Poplawski wrote:
>>> I'm thinking about building a moderately fast network storage server
>>> using a striped array of SSD disks. I'm not sure how much such a
>>> device would benefit from being dual processor and whether the latest
>>> Nehalem chips would be better than the older in the tooth (and less
>>> expensive) AMD Opteron offerings. I'm almost certainly going to be
>>> limited at the moment by using GigE, but would like to move to
>>> Infiniband in future. Thoughts?
>>>
>>
>> What specifically are you trying to do with this?
>>
>> Rather than looking at the solution, could you describe the problem you
>> need to solve?

OP> I've been building cheap, big, slow storage servers for our use. 
OP> However, some of our users are starting to need higher performance IO.
OP> We still don't have a lot of money, but I'd like to provide something 
OP> with a modest amount of storage (at least 500GB) that can at least 
OP> handle full GigE, perhaps up to DDR Infiniband for future expansion, 
OP> without breaking the bank.

-> see my other mail.

24 3.5" disks on a 3ware 24-port reach up to 700 MB/s write speed.
With 2.5" you are probably a bit slower. This is local access on the
filesystem.

Exporting this via NFS over TCP/IP (IP-over-IB for example) should give you about 300 to 400
MB/s. I have no experience with NFS-over-RDMA... maybe somebody else
can say something about the performance of that...

Jan