Gluster users - Feb 2010 - Which option would provide the best performance?

Hi,

First of all, I would like to appreciate Gluster for creating such amazing
fileystem.

I want to build a storage cluster to host KVM virtual machine images. There
will be about 20 client machines running the virtual machines hosted on the
storage cluster. I don't want to use hardware nor software RAID, but I need
the replication funcionality GlusterFS provides.

I've already decided to use Infiniband as interconnect and I'm trying to
decide the hardware specs, operating system and number of servers to use to
build the storage cluster.

I've two options:

A) Two OpenSolaris servers using ZFS with hardware optimized for maximun
performance (24 GB RAM, SSD disks for ARC and L2ARC) and 10 SAS/SATA disks.
GlusterFS configured to replicate bricks (RAID 1).

b) Four Linux servers with 6 SAS/SATA disks. GlusterFS configured to
replicate and stripe (RAID 10).

I understand that I can get way better read/write performance from a single
server with A configuration that from a single server with B configuration.
But I don't know if 4 "cheap" servers will give me better
performance than 2
"expensive" ones.

I know Linux is better supported and that it will be a lot easier to
configure and manage a Linux server thanks to Gluster Storage Platform, but
my biggest interest is performance.

Many thanks

Aitor Ortuondo
aortuondo at gmail.com