[Lustre-discuss] Are there recommended CPUs for Lustre servers?

[Kevin Van Maren]

Not sure how much this has improved with the cpu-scaling work in 2.x, but in general faster processors are much better than more processors.

Peak performance has been in the range of 4-8 cores, with performance dropping after that due to lock contention.  12 cores/node should still be fine, but certainly a faster-per-core quad core is likely preferable to a hex-core CPU.

OSS nodes need a good IO/memory subsystem most.  Bull used some large NUMA machines, but there are additional complications using eg, multiple IB HCAs for performance, so generally the 2-socket range is optimal.

Kevin


On Dec 6, 2011, at 11:57 PM, Oleg Drokin wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> On Dec 6, 2011, at 3:44 PM, Sebastian Gutierrez wrote:
>> Is there any recommendations on whether or not to use 6core Intel CPUs for the Lustre OSS or MDS nodes?  
> 
> While on MDs you do want to have as powerful machine as you can since there is only one,
> I think cpu is not a bottleneck on OSSes.
> Of course you still can install faster CPUs on OSSes, but I think your money would be better spent on memory instead.
> 
> Bye,
>    Oleg
> --
> Oleg Drokin
> Senior Software Engineer
> Whamcloud, Inc.
> 
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