[Swift-devel] Swift-issues (PBS+NFS Cluster)

[Michael Wilde]

On 5/7/09 12:54 PM, Tim Freeman wrote:
> On Thu, 07 May 2009 11:39:40 -0500
> Yi Zhu <yizhu at cs.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Michael Wilde wrote:
>>> Very good!
>>>
>>> Now, what kind of tests can you do next?
>> Next, I will try to let swift running on Amazon EC2.
>>
>>> Can you exercise the cluster with an interesting workflow?
>> Yes, Is there any complex sample/tools i can use (rahter than 
>> first.swift) to test swift performance? Is there any benchmark available 
>> i can compare with?
>>
>>> How large of a cluster can you assemble in a Nimbus workspace ?
>> Since the vm-image i use to test 'swift' is based on NFS shared file 
>> system, the performance may not be satisfiable if the we have a large 
>> scale of cluster. After I got the swift running on Amazon EC2, I will 
>> try to make a dedicate vm-image by using GPFS or any other shared file 
>> system you recommended.
>>
>>
>>> Can you aggregate VM's from a few different physical clusters into one 
>>> Nimbus workspace?
>> I don't think so. Tim may make commit on it.
> 
> There is some work going on right now making auto-configuration easier to do
> over multiple clusters (that is possible now, it's just very 'manual' and
> non-ideal unlike with one physical cluster).  You wouldn't really want to do NFS
> across a WAN, though.

Indeed. Now that I think this through more clearly, one workspace == one 
cluster == one Swift "site", so we could aggregate the resources of 
multiple workspaces through Swift to execute a multi-site workflow.

- Mike

>>
>>> What's the largest cluster you can assemble with Nimbus?
>> I am not quite sure,I will do some test onto it soon. since it is a 
>> EC2-like cloud, it should easily be configured as a cluster with 
>> hundreds of nodes. Tim may make commit on it.
> 
> I've heard of EC2 deployments in the 1000s at once, it's up to your EC2 account
> limitations (they seem pretty efficient with making your quota ever-higher).
> Nimbus installation at Teraport maxes out at 16, there are other 'science
> clouds' but I don't know their node numbers.  EC2 is the place where you will
> be able to really test scaling something.
> 
> Tim