SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3 Result

Silicon Graphics, Inc. : SGI InfiniteStorage NEXIS 9000
SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3 = 10305 Ops/Sec (Overall Response Time = 3.86 msec)


Performance

Throughput
(ops/sec)
Response
(msec)
1027 0.8
2055 1.8
3086 2.6
4093 3.1
5139 2.3
6169 2.7
7196 3.4
8259 4.5
9389 11.8
10117 12.0
10305 12.2
Performance Graph


Product and Test Information

Tested By Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Product Name SGI InfiniteStorage NEXIS 9000
Hardware Available April, 2008
Software Available May, 2008
Date Tested April, 2008
SFS License Number 4
Licensee Locations Mountain View, California

SGI® InfiniteStorage NEXIS 9000 Network-Attached Storage Appliance (NAS) is designed for scientific, education, or enterprise teams to maximize bandwidth for demanding and scalable High Performance Computing (HPC) applications or to consolidate multiple departments on a single NAS platform. It reduces CPU overhead and supports large Cache memory with an expanded cache architecture. NEXIS 9000 delivers high throughput to applications over InfiniBand (IB), 10GbE and/or GbE networks. A single NEXIS 9000 can scale storage capacity from 48 drives to 480 drives. NEXIS appliances support NFS v3 & v4, CIFS, FTP, TCP, SSH as well as iSCSI over IB and a web-based GUI for setup, management and monitoring storage resources, their utilization and performance.

For the most demanding HPC workloads, SGI® InfiniteStorage NEXIS 9000 NFS/RDMA over InfiniBand (IB) provides a low cost/high performance transport architecture reducing client CPU overhead, utilizing high-bandwidth IB fabrics and maximizing throughput.

Configuration Bill of Materials

Item No Qty Type Vendor Model/Name Description
1 1 Base Server SGI N9K-BASE-220-4 NEXIS 9000 BASE HIGH PERF NAS with 4 IS220
2 1 Server Upgrade SGI N9K-EXP-220-6 NEXIS 9000 Expansion with 6 additional IS220 (10 total)
3 12 Memory SGI N-MEM-16GB-MC NEXIS 16GB Mem (4 x 4GB)
4 120 Disk SGI N-220-146-I Nexis 146GB 15k rpm SAS Drive for InfiniteStorage 220
5 10 Disk & Enclosure SGI N-DE-220-146-I 12 bay tray with 12 146GB 15k rpm SAS Drives and RMKit
6 5 IB Controller SGI PCIE-IB-HCA410D InfiniBand HCA (X8 PCIe, low profile, memory free) w/ single 4X DDR IB port
7 1 Rack SGI NEXIS-RACK-TALL InfiniteStorage NEXIS Rack for all NAS Bundles
8 4 Power SGI LSX-PDU-220-Z Power Distribution Unit for US, CANADA, JAPAN, KOREA, TAIWAN
9 1 Software SGI SR5-NFS-RDMA-4 NFS RDMA License
10 1 Software SGI SC5-APPMGR-4.2 NAS software for bundles includes Appliance Manager software, ProPack 5 and SLES 10 media kits
11 1 Software SGI SR5-PP-SV1-4-3Y SGI ProPack Server for 1-4 sockets 3 yrs upgrade protection.
12 1 Software SGI SR5-SLS-SV1-32-3Y SMP server 1-32 sockets with 3 yr of upg protection; for IPF or x86_64 systems.
13 10 Software SGI SC5-ISSM-WE-2.70 ISSM Workgroup Edition for SGI InfiniteStorage 220 - for Linux

Server Software

OS Name and Version SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (ia64) SP1 2.6.16.54-0.2.5-default
Other Software SGI InfiniteStorage Software Platform, version 1.2.1; SGI ProPack 5SP5 for Linux; ISSM Workgroup Edition for SGI InfiniteStorage 220 - for Linux
Filesystem Software XFS

Server Tuning

Name Value Description
/proc/irq/71/smp_affinity 8 Override factory IRQ binding for 2nd IB interface; bind to CPU 3 instead of CPU 5.
vm.dirty_expire_centisecs 100 Data that has been in memory for longer than this interval will be written out next time a pdflush daemon wakes up. Expressed in 100ths of a second.

Server Tuning Notes

System defaults used except as noted. "Capacity IOPS" selected at system initialization.

Disks and Filesystems

Description Number of Disks Usable Size
Mirrored boot disk for system use only 2 300.0 GB
24 disks per IS220 RAID unit, bound into 4 4+1 RAID5 LUNs + 4 spare, all assembled into a single file system. 240 22.9 TB
Total 242 23.1 TB
Number of Filesystems 1
Total Exported Capacity 23404 GB
Filesystem Type XFS
Filesystem Creation Options Default
Filesystem Config AppMan default for "Capacity IOPS" consisting of 10 stripe sets built from LUNs on 4 different controllers. The stripe sets are concatenated into an XVM logical volume. The file system uses all available capacity on the resulting logical volume.
Fileset Size 1216.2 GB

Network Configuration

Item No Network Type Number of Ports Used Notes
1 InfiniBand 4 Default

Network Configuration Notes

Two IB ports connect to each blade enclosure in the client cluster. The top and bottom available ports were used on the integral IB Plane 1 switch in each blade enclosure.

Benchmark Network

Cluster IB plane 1 used for NFS on IP over IB. Physical connections from four Nexis 9000 IB ports to the upper and lower available IB switch ports on the right side of each Altix ICE blade enclosure, four connections total. One Nexis 9000 IB port and one IB plane 1 port on each Altix ICE blade enclosure were unused. Cluster IB plane 0 used for interprocess communication. Gigabit Ethernet used only for cluster administration.

Processing Elements

Item No Qty Type Description Processing Function
1 8 CPU Intel® Itanium® processor 9030, 1.6 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 8 chips, 16 cores, 2 cores/chip, DDR2 FB-DIMM memory TCP/IP, NFS protocol, XFS file system, XVM volume manager

Processing Element Notes

None.

Memory

Description Size in GB Number of Instances Total GB Nonvolatile
Server main memory, DDR2 FB-DIMM, PC2 3200R 16 12 192 V
HW RAID memory w/ 72 hour battery backup. 2 10 20 NV
Grand Total Memory Gigabytes     212  

Memory Notes

The RAID unit mirrored write cache is backed up with a battery unit able to retain the write cache for 72 hours in the event of a power failure.

Stable Storage

NFS stable write and commit operations are not acknowledged until after the RAID storage system has acknowledged that the related data stored at least in mirrored non-volatile RAM. The storage array has dual storage processor units that work as an active-active failover pair. When one of the storage processors or battery units are off-line, the system turns off the write cache and writes directly to disk before acknowledging any write operations.

System Under Test Configuration Notes

Default configuration

Other System Notes

None.

Test Environment Bill of Materials

Item No Qty Vendor Model/Name Description
1 1 SGI LCB-SYSTEM Altix ICE system
2 2 SGI LCB-BASE-CB-4X-2 Altix ICE blade enclosure with two InfiniBand switches (dual plane), redundant power and fans
3 1 SGI LCB-TORUS 3D torus or hypercube topology
4 32 SGI LCB-BLADE-CB Altix ICE compute blade with 2-sockets, which support processors with a 1333MHz FSB, and 8 DIMM slots.
5 64 SGI LCB-CPU-5355-CB 2.66GHz/8M/1333MHz Quad-core Xeon Processor
6 128 SGI LCB-MEM-FB-4G-CB 4GB Fully Buffered DIMM set (2 x 2GB, 667MHz)
7 8 SGI IB-CABLE-01M-Z InfiniBand 4x Cable - 1M
8 4 SGI IB-CABLE-02M-Z InfiniBand 4x Cable - 2M
9 1 SGI LCB-DVD-RW-INT Internal DVD RW drive for Altix ICE
10 6 SGI RACK-PWR-CB-1PH Single phase PDU (US)
11 1 SGI LCB-CONSOLE Console with keyboard, video and mouse
12 1 SGI LCB-LOGIN-NODE Login node
13 1 SGI LCB-SYS6015 Altix ICE service node (1U, RPS, RAID)
14 2 SGI LCB-MEM-FB-2G-SN 2GB Fully Buffered DIMM set (2 x 1GB, 667MHz) for Altix ICE system admin controller and service nodes
15 2 SGI LCB-SASDRV-73G 73GB 15K RPM SAS HDD for Altix ICE
16 1 SGI LCB-CPU-5150-SN Additional 2.66GHz Dual-core Xeon Processor

Load Generators

LG Type Name LG1
BOM Item # 4
Processor Name LCB-CPU-5355-CB
Processor Speed 2.66 GHz
Number of Processors (chips) 2
Number of Cores/Chip 4
Memory Size 16 GB
Operating System SLES10 SP1
Network Type Built-in NICs, 2 each 4xDDR InfiniBand, 1 each Gigabit Ethernet

Load Generator (LG) Configuration

Benchmark Parameters

Network Attached Storage Type NFS V3
Number of Load Generators 32
Number of Processes per LG 8
Biod Max Read Setting 2
Biod Max Write Setting 2
Block Size 1024

Testbed Configuration

LG No LG Type Network Target Filesystems Notes
1..4 LG1 IB0 FS1 4 cluster nodes accessing storage on the 10.149.0.0/18 IB0 subnet.
5..8 LG1 IB1 FS1 4 cluster nodes accessing storage on the 10.149.64.0/18 IB1 subnet.
9..12 LG1 IB2 FS1 4 cluster nodes accessing storage on the 10.149.128.0/18 IB2 subnet.
13..16 LG1 IB3 FS1 4 cluster nodes accessing storage on the 10.149.192.0/18 IB3 subnet.

Load Generator Configuration Notes

One file system mounted by all active clients. Compute nodes in blade enclosure 0 were active as load generators. Compute nodes in blade enclosure 1 were unused.

Uniform Access Rule Compliance

Every client has the same file system mounted from the server.

Other Notes

None

Config Diagrams


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First published at SPEC.org on 21-May-2008