White Papers

Dell HPC NFS Storage Solution High Availability (NSS-HA) Configurations with Dell PowerEdge 12th
Generation Servers
iii
Contents
Executive summary ..................................................................................................... 5
1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 6
2. NSS-HA solution review .......................................................................................... 6
2.1. A brief introduction to NSS-HA solutions .................................................................. 6
2.2. NSS-HA offerings from Dell .................................................................................. 8
2.3. General comparisons among NSS-HA solutions ......................................................... 10
3. Dell PowerEdge 12
th
generation servers in NSS4-HA ..................................................... 11
3.1. Dell PowerEdge R620 vs. Dell PowerEdge R710 ........................................................ 11
3.2. PCI-E slots recommendations in the Dell PowerEdge R620 .......................................... 12
3.3. Comprehensive comparisons between NSS4-HA and NSS3-HA releases ............................ 13
4. Evaluation ....................................................................................................... 16
4.1. Method ........................................................................................................ 16
4.2. Test bed ...................................................................................................... 16
4.3. HA functionality ............................................................................................. 19
4.3.1. Potential failures and fault tolerant mechanisms in NSS-HA .................................. 19
4.3.2. HA tests for NSS-HA ................................................................................... 20
5. NSS-HA Performance with Dell PowerEdge 12
th
generation servers ................................ 22
5.1. IPoIB sequential writes and reads ..................................................................... 23
5.2. Random writes and reads ............................................................................... 24
5.3. Metadata tests ............................................................................................ 25
6. Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 27
7. References ....................................................................................................... 27
Appendix A: Benchmarks and test tools .......................................................................... 28
A.1. IOzone ......................................................................................................... 28
A.2. mdtest ......................................................................................................... 30
A.3. Checkstream ................................................................................................. 31
A.4. The dd Linux utility ......................................................................................... 32
Tables
Table 1. NSS-HA Solutions
(2), (3)
...................................................................................... 9
Table 2. The comparisons among NSS-HA Solutions
(2),(3)
..................................................... 10
Table 3. Dell PowerEdge R620 vs. Dell PowerEdge R710 ..................................................... 12
Table 4. Storage components in NSS-HA ........................................................................ 14