Lustre discuss - May 2006 - Questions about Lustre low-level details

Hi,

A couple of quick (ha!) questions, regarding some of
the lower-level details in Lustre.

First off, in the FAQ it mentions supporting other
OS''. I honestly can''t see the advantage in using a
blazingly fast network FS on Windows, but there would
probably be some customers. I certainly could see it
for FreeBSD, which should not be an undoable leap, if
there''s an OS-X port in the works.

Second, the FAQ mentions that there''s no work on
supporting non-Ext filesystems under Linux, as there
isn''t a vast speed difference. With Reiser4 now out
and about with some fairly impressive benchmarks, is
this a question worth revisiting?

Third, Linux supports all kinds of network QoS, these
days. Under typical Linux cluster conditions - which
may well involve a mix of traffic from MPI, Lustre,
Mosix/OpenMosix/Beowulf, and the random low-level buzz
of keepalives and other miscellaneous traffic - does
Lustre generate enough of a footprint to make it worth
bounding with QoS? Or, conversely, is it sensitive
enough to make it worth guaranteeing a certain level
of bandwidth?

On another networking point, Lustre is described as
working over IP, but the FAQ doesn''t say if that is
IPv4 only, or whether IPv6 is also supported. Is there
(or will there be) IPv6 support? And, if so, are there
any extensions to IPv6 that Lustre will be able to
take advantage of?

Lastly, there''s also mention in the FAQ on getting
Lustre into the mainstream kernel. Have you approached
any of the patch maintainers, such as Andrew Morton or
Alan Cox, on getting a "taster" version into one of
the extra patchsets? What you don''t want to run into
is incompatiable bugfixes, as that means more time
tracking and less time developing. Once something is
in some patchset or other, people are more likely to
test any changes they make against your code, though
no guarantees they''d then do anything about it.

Jonathan Day



		
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