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HPC USER FORUM I/O PANEL April 2009 Roanoke, VA. Panel questions: 1 response per question Limit length to 1 slide. Q1. Parallel NFS finally is here!.
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HPC USER FORUM I/O PANELApril 2009Roanoke, VA Panel questions: 1 response per question Limit length to 1 slide
Q1. Parallel NFS finally is here! • With the formalization of Parallel NFS as a standard - what steps are being provided to enable this to be hosted on current (and future) platform choices? • We feel that this will be complimentary to GPFS and Lustre until it has demonstrated experience on multiple Petascale systems. • It’s complimentary in that it provides ubiquitous access for non-Linux systems • RDMA optimizations • Utilization of Drive and SSD media
Q2. Parallel NFS – implementation details… • What tools are available to help optimize this (from application layer level all the way to archival stage)? What is missing and who should provide it? • We feel that PNFS is more of an access layer than a file system, so – the enablement will come from Software • Missing: • Scaling • data management: backups, replication, • MPI I/O • RDMA • Windows support is still unclear, and in many ways the Windows community needs this more than the Linux community • Community, Commercial Arena
Q3. Physical media interconnects … • We all are facing complexity and cost issues. With IB or 10 GbE (40/100 GbE) : where should the HPC community focus its resources on - for all I/O? • All I/O – Ethernet, but this is impractical because it is by definition slower than IB – and always will be b/c the industry moves slow. • So long as HPC will break the mold, we’ll have to support both
Q4. Layer protocols above the interconnects • Too many standards. interconnects, media layers are issues today. iSCSI/FCOE/FcoCEE/FCoIB have all been touted as the solution(s). Is it even relevant in the HPC arena? Is fragmentation the only choice? • Probably going to be an issue for a long time • DDN SFA platform will eliminate much of the need for SCSI, however support for NAS protocols will still be there • So – it’s somewhat relevant, SCSI is somewhat needless (HPC is mostly file I/O, not block I/O) – and many (like DDN) will accelerate and simplify.
Q5. I/O issues not yet addressed? • What do you consider to be the top 3 main (technical or human) issues in HPC I/O? • Efficient Utilization of Media (Spinning or Otherwise) • Data Integrity • Quality of HPC File Storage (not just file systems, but the alignment of HPC file systems with proper HPC storage devices)