Dell Power Solutions

HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTINGAchieving Scalable I/O Performancein High-Performance Computing EnvironmentsDell PowerEdge servers, when combined with a Dell/EMC CX700 storage array andthe IBRIX high-performance parallel file system, are designed to provide a scalable,economical cluster solution for high-performance computing applications. This articlediscusses the performance results obtained using an IBRIX parallel file system onDell/EMC storage connected to Dell PowerEdge servers.BY AMINA SAIFY; RAMESH RADHAKRISHNAN, PH.D.; SUDHIR SRINIVASAN, PH.D.;AND ONUR CELEBIOGLUFor organizations implementing coarse-grained parallelsolutions in scientific applications, high-performancecomputing (HPC) clusters made up of standards-basedcomputers can offer a cost-effective alternative to expensivesupercomputers. Figure 1 shows a generic HPC clusterthat consists of several compute nodes and I/O nodes.The compute nodes perform CPU-intensive tasks whilethe I/O nodes perform data storage functions. The I/Onodes provide the compute nodes with shared access tofiles, and also interface with disk arrays, typically over astorage area network (SAN).Several factors should be considered when designinga high-performance I/O subsystem: servers used as I/Onodes, storage technology, file systems, interconnects, andapplication behavior. SCSI and Fibre Channel technologiesare available for back-end storage, and InfiniBand, Myrinet,and Gigabit Ethernet technologies are available for interconnects.For file systems that connect the entire I/O subsystem,Network File System (NFS), storage area network (SAN) filesystems, and parallel file systems are available.This article discusses the performance results obtainedusing an IBRIX parallel file system on Dell/EMC CX seriesstorage connected to Dell PowerEdge servers. The configurationused for this performance study—which was conductedin November 2004 by the Dell HPC Cluster (HPCC)team and IBRIX Inc.—included eight Dell PowerEdge 1750servers, which served as I/O nodes connected to a backendFibre Channel Dell/EMC CX700 storage array. The I/Onodes served data from the array to 16 compute nodesconnected through a Gigabit Ethernet switch. Each I/Onode used a QLogic QLA2340 host bus adapter (HBA)for Fibre Channel connectivity. The results of this studyshow that the cluster achieved near-linear scalability inread bandwidth (to over 1.1 GB/sec) as the number of I/Onodes was increased from one to eight.Setting up the clusterDell PowerEdge 1750 servers were used for the I/O nodes ofthe cluster. The PowerEdge 1750 server can have up to twoIntel ®Xeonprocessors, which feature Intel NetBurstt ®microarchitectureand Intel Hyper-Threading Technology. This servercan support up to 8 GB of 266 MHz error-correcting code(ECC) double data rate (DDR) SDRAM memory for expandableperformance. It also offers Chipkill support with 512 KB,1 GB, and 2 GB dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs) andspare-bank configuration to help ensure memory availability.The PowerEdge 1750 features a ServerWorks GC-LE chip setthat utilizes a 533 MHz frontside bus (FSB), 2:1 memoryinterleaving for fast memory access, and two PeripheralComponent Interconnect (PCI) slots. In addition, this server128POWER SOLUTIONS Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2005. Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. February 2005