Joe Landman wrote:
Guy Coates wrote:
At what node count does the nfs-root model start to break down? Does anyone
have any rough numbers with the number of clients you can support with a generic
linux NFS server vs a dedicated NAS filer?
If you use warewulf or the new perceus variant, it creates a ram disk
which is populated upon boot. Thats one of the larger transients. Then
you nfs mount applications, and home directories. I haven't looked at
Scyld for a while, but I seem to remember them doing something like this.
I've booted up and run a 130 node cluster in ramdisk mode, with
applications shared over NFS. I ran HPL benchmarks for the client across
all nodes in the cluster in this configuration.
That's 130 Sun galaxy 4200s, the head node being a Galaxy 4200 also in
this case.
I agree with what Joe says about a few hundred nodes being the time you
would start to look closer at this approach.
Even better if you can load balance your NFS servers and set them up to
mirror each other, or use a hardware unit like Panasas, and so on.
Second that.
--
John Hearns
Senior HPC Engineer
Streamline Computing,
The Innovation Centre, Warwick Technology Park,
Gallows Hill, Warwick CV34 6UW
Office: 01926 623130 Mobile: 07841 231235
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