On Sep 11, 2006, at 10:14 PM, Brent Franks wrote:
Hello,
We have been researching GPFS from IBM and are very interested in what
looks like promising performance and scalability.
Does anyone use GPFS, we are looking at running it in a distributed
mode, rather than using one central SAN.
Additionally, the sales information seems to be rather elusive. We
have contacted IBM, however the channels we contact have all been
somewhat dissapointing as we have had to educate the sales people on
what the product is.
We are very interested in setting up a trial of the software and then
purchasing if it meets our needs. Does anyone have a contact at IBM
or solutions provider who is familiar with GPFS and could send out an
eval kit? 30 or 60 day time bomb would be fine, we just need to
justify to management that it will indeed work for our application.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks and kindest regards,
- Brent
Hi Brent,
You do not mention what interconnect (protocol or advertised
throughput) that you are considering. If you are considering gigabit
Ethernet, you can skip the rest of this message.
If, however, you are considering something faster than gigabit
Ethernet, bear in mind that GPFS only can use TCP (as far as I know).
You will be limited to the performance of the TCP on your
interconnect. If you are using TCP/IP/Ethernet, then expect a very
high CPU load. If you are considering an IB solution, look closely at
their IPoIB results.
Some filesystems can take advantage of the underlying (non-Ethernet)
fabric to achieve higher throughput and lower CPU usage.
Scott
--
Scott Atchley
Myricom Inc.
http://www.myri.com
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