Lustre discuss - Oct 2009 - Network best practices

Hello,

we currently have a cluster connected with a private GbE network.
Traffic other than Lustre is minimal (Gridengine task management).
Nevertheless, we have the MDS loosing connection to the OSS from time to
time under load. 

As it proved to be critical to Lustre not to lose the connection between
MDS and OSS, we''re thinking about implementing a separate direct
connection between the lustre servers, using one interface for internal
traffic and another one for bulk traffic (client connection).

Does this make sense? Did anyone already implemented such a network
layout, or is it even possible with lustre?

Thanks
Arne



-- 
Arne Brutschy
Ph.D. Student                    Email    arne.brutschy(AT)ulb.ac.be
IRIDIA CP 194/6                  Web      iridia.ulb.ac.be/~abrutschy
Universite'' Libre de Bruxelles   Tel      +32 2 650 3168
Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50     Fax      +32 2 650 2715
1050 Bruxelles, Belgium          (Fax at IRIDIA secretary)

On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 17:02 +0100, Arne Brutschy wrote:
> Hello,
Hi,
> we currently have a cluster connected with a private GbE network.
> Traffic other than Lustre is minimal (Gridengine task management).
> Nevertheless, we have the MDS loosing connection to the OSS from time to
> time under load. 
What makes you think this is related to network saturation?
> As it proved to be critical to Lustre not to lose the connection between
> MDS and OSS, we''re thinking about implementing a separate direct
> connection between the lustre servers, using one interface for internal
> traffic and another one for bulk traffic (client connection).
MDS->OSS traffic is minimal compared to clients.  I''m not convinced
that
what you have is really a network saturation problem.

You probably want to purse the connection problems and from there decide
why they are happening before jumping to conclusions.

Bugzilla can be a great resource for trying to figure out what various
error messages might mean.

b.

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