[Lustre-discuss] Lustre Client Access SAN

[Andreas Dilger]

On Jul 27, 2009  13:19 +0600, Tharindu Rukshan Bamunuarachchi wrote:
> 1.       does Lustre client directly access SAN/storage (like GFS, OCFS or
> Sun Cluster SVM)

No, client only communicates with the server, and only a single server
will access storage at any one time.

> 2.       if client connects over network, 
> a.       will TCP/IP performance directly hit on CFS

Depends on what you do.  Lustre makes VERY efficient use of GigE network,
but it can also use InfiniBand natively for lower latency and higher
bandwidth (IPoIB used only for addressing the nodes).

> b.      cannot I keep client on same machine as OSS/MDS etc.

This will work, but is not a 100% supported configuration because of
a small risk of deadlock.  A patch to reduce the chance of local
deadlock has been landed for 1.8.2, but it still isn't one of our
supported configs (i.e. we don't test this heavily ourselves).

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Sr. Staff Engineer, Lustre Group
Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.