[Lustre-discuss] Problems & partial success on PPC64 (XServe G5) Debian cluster

[Robert Olson]

> As a starting point - we basically never test Lustre with a big-endian
> server, so while it works in theory I would instead suggest starting
> with a big-endian client and little-endian servers first, get that  
> working,

This works great - running a pair off OSTs on some intel boxes with  
clients on the PPC64 nodes. Initial iozone measurements are making me  
happy, seeing fairly decent performance over gigabit ethernet through  
at least a couple switches (the servers are some older/slower  
machines that sit elsewhere in the machine room from the cluster).

> and then tackle the big endian server separately (likely using  
> something
> like 2.6.22 ext4 as the starting point for ldiskfs, since the  
> extent code
> has proper endian swabbing already).  You could also try without  
> mballoc
> and extents on the OSTs.

Are these changes that can be made by someone ignorant of the  
implementation details of the lustre code? (config options, not  
applying some patches, etc?) I'd be happy to try things out but would  
need something of a roadmap to do so.

thanks,
--bob