Lustre discuss - Dec 2011 - Are there recommended CPUs for Lustre servers?

Hello

Is there any recommendations on whether or not to use 6core Intel CPUs for the
Lustre OSS or MDS nodes?

Sebastian

Hello!

On Dec 6, 2011, at 3:44 PM, Sebastian Gutierrez wrote:
> Is there any recommendations on whether or not to use 6core Intel CPUs for
the Lustre OSS or MDS nodes?
While on MDs you do want to have as powerful machine as you can since there is
only one,
I think cpu is not a bottleneck on OSSes.
Of course you still can install faster CPUs on OSSes, but I think your money
would be better spent on memory instead.

Bye,
    Oleg
--
Oleg Drokin
Senior Software Engineer
Whamcloud, Inc.

Not sure how much this has improved with the cpu-scaling work in 2.x, but in
general faster processors are much better than more processors.

Peak performance has been in the range of 4-8 cores, with performance dropping
after that due to lock contention.  12 cores/node should still be fine, but
certainly a faster-per-core quad core is likely preferable to a hex-core CPU.

OSS nodes need a good IO/memory subsystem most.  Bull used some large NUMA
machines, but there are additional complications using eg, multiple IB HCAs for
performance, so generally the 2-socket range is optimal.

Kevin


On Dec 6, 2011, at 11:57 PM, Oleg Drokin wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> On Dec 6, 2011, at 3:44 PM, Sebastian Gutierrez wrote:
>> Is there any recommendations on whether or not to use 6core Intel CPUs
for the Lustre OSS or MDS nodes?
> 
> While on MDs you do want to have as powerful machine as you can since there
is only one,
> I think cpu is not a bottleneck on OSSes.
> Of course you still can install faster CPUs on OSSes, but I think your
money would be better spent on memory instead.
> 
> Bye,
>    Oleg
> --
> Oleg Drokin
> Senior Software Engineer
> Whamcloud, Inc.
> 
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> Lustre-discuss mailing list
> Lustre-discuss at lists.lustre.org
> http://lists.lustre.org/mailman/listinfo/lustre-discuss

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