PBFS: pros & contras

[Ivan Oleynik]

We are trying to understand an importance of PBFS for the cluster
environment in order to finalize our cluster configuration.

People are saying that PBFS tremendously boost parallel IO especially for
MPI type applications. At the same time, we have heard about several
technical problems with PBFS related with its stability. In particular,
beowulf engineers tell us that we have to have 2 IDE hard drives per node
to have the system to survive in case of failure of one of 2 IDE HDs.

Although we are mostly involved in scientific computing and not going to
do any Gigabytes data mining, we are trying to have as universal system as
possible in order to address properly the new type of problems that can
appear on our horizon in the future.

I would appreciate some input about the importance of PBFS for beowulf
type systems, especially for the MPI type applications. How it is
difficult to keep it up and running? Is there easy way to turn it off in
case we won't not want it?

Ivan

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Ivan I. Oleynik                       E-mail : oleynik at chuma.cas.usf.edu
Department of Physics
University of South Florida
4202 East Fowler Avenue                  Tel : (813) 974-8186
Tampa, Florida 33620-5700                Fax : (813) 974-5813
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