[Beowulf] Looking for NFS Server performance comparison

[Bill Rankin]

Hi Gang,

This may be a rehash, but I'm looking for any references to papers  
that address the issue of NFS server scalability in a cluster  
environment.  Our current cluster here at Duke is right at 500 nodes  
(and growing) and the single NFS server with attached SCSI drives  
serving all data to all nodes just doesn't seem to hack it anymore.

I know that there are clustered solutions like PVFS, IBRIX, et. al.  
as well as the dedicated filer approach (NetApp, EMC, etc.) and we  
are looking at those. But first we need to convince the powers that  
be that a Linux-based NFS server just ain't going to cut it as we  
move forward.

So if anyone knows of good documents (white papers, conference  
papers, etc.) that will support my assertion, I would appreciate a  
pointer to them.

Thanks,

-bill




bill rankin, ph.d. ........ director, cluster and grid technology group
wrankin at ee.duke.edu .......................... center for computational
duke university ...................... science engineering and medicine
http://www.ee.duke.edu/~wrankin .............. http://www.csem.duke.edu