[Beowulf] posting bonnie++ stats from our cluster: any comments about my I/O performance stats?

[Rahul Nabar]

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Joe Landman
<landman at scalableinformatics.com> wrote:
> Best way to get IOPs data in a "standard" manner is to run the type of test
> that generates 8k random reads.

THanks again Joe! I'll run that one. Got to figure out the exact
command line. Bonnie is complicated.

> I've found fio (http://freshmeat.net/projects/fio/) to be an excellent
> testing tool for disk systems.

Ok, I have fio. Actually downloaded that after reading some of your
comments on your blog. :)
Unfortunately the things a beast. Couldn't figure out how to use it.
And I really didn't want to do a PhD on disk I/O.

Thanks much for your recipie. I am going to try that now.

> It looks like channel bonding isn't helping you much.  Is your server

No?  From which numbers?

> channel bonded?  Clients?  Both?

Both.

>>
> Heh ... depends on the vendor.  We are pretty open and free with our numbers
> (to our current/prospective customers), and our test cases.

True. I shouldn't generalize. But most vendors still. I wish they'd
scrap all their "whitepapers". Vendor whitepapers (to me) seem the
kind of document that strives to attain the minimum information
density. Probably a good reading for the clueless non-technical guys
sitting in top-management. Give me quantitative benchmarks or spec
sheets any day! (Ok, ok, I am probably venting here; but talking
knowledgably with vendors has been hard!)

>
> What RAID adapter and drives?  I am assuming some sort of Dell unit.

Correct. A Dell Power Connect with an internal RAID card and drives.

>What is
> the connection from the server to the network

Three channel bonded eth connections.

>... single gigabit (ala Rocks
> clusters), or 10 GbE, or channel bonded gigabit?

Nope. No 10 Gig E on this cluster.

-- 
Rahul