Improving NFS Performance on HPC Clusters with Dell Fluid Cache for DAS
3
Contents
Executive Summary
.......................................................................................................
5
1.
Introduction
...........................................................................................................
6
1.1.
Dell Fluid Cache for DAS (direct-attached storage)
.....................................................
6
2.
Solution design and architecture
..................................................................................
6
2.1.
NFS storage solution (baseline)
.............................................................................
7
2.2.
Dell Fluid Cache for DAS based solution
..................................................................
9
2.3.
I/O clients test bed
.........................................................................................
10
2.4.
Solution tuning
...............................................................................................
12
2.4.1.
Storage
..................................................................................................
13
2.4.2.
NFS server
..............................................................................................
13
2.4.3.
Dell Fluid Cache for DAS
.............................................................................
14
2.5.
Tracking solution health and performance
.............................................................
14
2.5.1.
Server health and monitoring
.......................................................................
14
2.5.2.
Dell PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe SSD health and monitoring
..............................
14
2.5.3.
Dell Fluid Cache for DAS health and monitoring
.................................................
16
3.
Performance
........................................................................................................
16
3.1.
Sequential writes and reads
...............................................................................
17
3.2.
Random writes and reads
..................................................................................
19
3.3.
Metadata tests
...............................................................................................
20
3.4.
Cold-cache tests
.............................................................................................
22
4.
Conclusion
...........................................................................................................
25
5.
References
..........................................................................................................
25
Appendix A: Step-by-step configuration of Dell Fluid Cache for NFS
..........................................
27
A.1.
Hardware checklist and cabling
..........................................................................
27
A.2.
NFS server set up
............................................................................................
28
A.3.
NFS server configuration and tuning
.....................................................................
29
A.4.
Virtual disk configuration
..................................................................................
31
A.5.
XFS and DFC configuration
.................................................................................
33
A.6.
Useful commands and references
........................................................................
34
A.7.
Performance tuning on clients
............................................................................
34
Appendix B: Benchmarks and tests
...................................................................................
35
B.1.
IOzone
.........................................................................................................
35
B.2.
mdtest
.........................................................................................................
37
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
