White Papers

Dell HPC NFS Storage Solution High Availability (NSS-HA) Configurations with Dell PowerEdge 12th
Generation Servers
10
2.3. General comparisons among NSS-HA solutions
Table 2 gives general comparisons among the three releases of NSS-HA solutions, focusing on four
aspects: storage capacity, performance, configuration, and HA functionalities. It is worth pointing out
that there are significant changes in configuration steps between the first and second release, while
there is a few configuration step changes between the second and third release. Furthermore, with the
help of Dell PowerEdge 12
th
generation servers and FDR InfiniBand network connection, the NSS-HA
solution now achieves sequential read peak performance up to 4508 MB/sec.
The comparisons among NSS-HA Solutions
(2),(3)
Table 2.
NSS2-HA Release
(April 2011)
NSS3-HA Release
(February 2012)
“Large capacity
configuration”
NSS4-HA Release
(July 2012)
“PowerEdge 12G
based solution”
Release Purpose
Initial Release
Add the ability to support
greater than 100TB storage
capacity.
Move to latest server
technology. Take
advantage of the
performance
improvement with Dell
PowerEdge 12
th
generation servers
Storage
Capacity
The maximum supported size
is 96 TB in a standard
configuration
The XL configuration
supports 2x96TB.
The maximum supported size is 288 TB in a standard
configuration.
The XL configuration supports 2x288TB (two file systems).
Sequential
Performance
(standard
configuration)
Peak write: 1275 MB/sec
Peak read: 2430 MB/sec
Peak write: 1495 MB/sec
Peak read: 2127 MB/sec
Peak write: 1535 MB/sec
Peak read: 4058 MB/sec
Configuration
Details
The complete configuration
steps can be found at Dell
HPC NFS Storage Solution
High Availability
Configurations, Version 1.1
Compared to the 1
st
release,
there are significant changes in
NSS-HA configuration steps.
The complete configuration
steps can be found at Dell HPC
NFS Storage Solution – High
availability with large
capacities, Version 2.1
Compared to the 2
nd
release, there are few
changes in NSS-HA
configuration steps.
The complete
configuration steps will
be published in July 2012
with an update to this
white paper.
HA Functionalities
All three releases use the same mechanisms to tolerate or recover the following failures:
 Single local disk failure on a server
 Single server failure
 Power supply or power bus failure
 Fence device failure
 SAS cable/port failure
 Dual SAS cable/card failure
 InfiniBand /10GbE link failure
 Private switch failure
 Heartbeat network interface failure
 RAID controller failure on Dell PowerVault MD3200 storage array
Note: For detailed technical comparisons, refer to Table 4 and Table 5 in section title, Comprehensive
comparisons between NSS4-HA and NSS3-HA releases.