pCFS vs. PVFS: comparing a highly-available symmetrical parallel cluster file system with an asymmetrical parallel file system

Authors:
Paulo A. Lopes;Pedro D. Medeiros
Affiliations:
CITI and Department of Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Monte de Caparica, Portugal;CITI and Department of Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Monte de Caparica, Portugal
Venue:
EuroPar'10 Proceedings of the 16th international Euro-Par conference on Parallel processing: Part I
Year:
2010

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Abstract

pCFS is a highly available parallel, symmetrical (where nodes perform both compute and I/O work) cluster file system that we have designed to run in medium-sized clusters. In this paper, using exactly the same hardware and Linux version across all nodes we compare pCFS with two distinct configurations of PVFS: one using internal disks, and therefore not able to provide any tolerance against disk and/or I/O node failures, and another where PVFS I/O servers access LUNs in a disk array and thus provide high availability (in the following named HA-PVFS). We start by measuring I/O bandwidth and CPU consumption of PVFS and HA-PVFS setups; then, the same set of tests is performed with pCFS. We conclude that, when using the same hardware, pCFS compares very favourably with HA-PVFS, offering the same or higher I/O bandwidths at a much lower CPU consumption.