[Beowulf] storage server hardware considerations

[Jan Heichler]

Hallo Orion,

Mittwoch, 15. Juli 2009, meintest Du:

>> Can you give a bit more Info?

>> Network Storage Server = NFS?

OP> NFS, though I'm open for trying other options.

Well...NFS is a good start... if 100 MB/s is enough for your purposes.

NFS does not work very well on higher speeds - the protocoll seems to
have quite some overhead.

>> Why SSDs?
>>

OP> Performance per watt, $?  I'm happy to be corrected.

Well. SSD is very expensive - and not necessarily more energy
efficient.

I would vote for 2.5" SATA drives. With the Supermicro SC216 for
example you can have 24 disks. Add a 3ware 9650SE-24 to build a
raidset.

>> What speed do you want to reach?

OP> I'd be happy with saturating 1 GigE ( ~ 100MB/s ?) to start, with some
OP> headroom.  Don't want to break the bank though for the last bit of 
OP> performance.

To reach 100 MB/s you can probably start with 8+2 disks in a RAID6.
That should give you enough to saturate a single 1GE link.

>> In general: RAM does help, CPU power is normally not necessary.

OP> That's my feeling, but wondering how low on the cpu to go.  Is a dual 
OP> (physical) processor system a help?

Well... single socket, dualcore is perfectly fine to saturate a 1GE
Link.

Jan