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When is it safe to position NL nodes for workflow?
When is it safe to position NL nodes for configurations where performance is of limited concern?
This post is more than 5 years old
13 Posts
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When is it safe to position NL nodes for configurations where performance is of limited concern?
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PaulDanis
13 Posts
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September 10th, 2013 08:00
This configuration is used ONLY when there are no performance concerns - including treewalks.
Phil.Lam
3 Apprentice
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592 Posts
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September 21st, 2013 23:00
Most likely in Archive data workflows.
Peter_Sero
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September 22nd, 2013 05:00
Then how many percent of your data will you be allowed to access per day?
1%
5%
15%
50%
100%
Probably we can agree that it is NOT an archive when
ALL of the data is accessed each day, but without
a more quantitative statement the term "archive" is pretty useless...
-- Peter
PS: I am seeing NL nodes serving 10% of their theoritical
storage capacity serving per day, or 10TB out of 100TB,
and that NOT being a archive, and working well:
One doesn't need to be afraid of a sustained or average
~110 MB/s (1 Gb/s) throughput with mostly sequential
reads or writes for NL nodes.
With mostly random IO or hundreds of millions of
files, an NL cluster can be easily killed, but so
can an X series cluster without SSD for metadata.
Phil.Lam
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592 Posts
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September 22nd, 2013 13:00
Thanks for straightening me out Peter.
Sent from my iPhone
Peter_Sero
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September 22nd, 2013 19:00
I'm open for a discussion -- what is an archive, performance-wise?
-- Peter
Anonymous
5 Practitioner
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274.2K Posts
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September 23rd, 2013 07:00
Typically archive workloads consist of infrequently accessed files. The performance that is required of the archive depends on the application, but in most cases slower than normal response times/latencies are acceptable. Considering the nature of how many archive solutions grow, the linear scalability of an Isilon cluster provides great benefit. NL nodes are also good for backup workflows. These are very sequential in nature and throughput oriented without the need for low latency or the capability for ultra-fast treewalks. This is ideal for NL Nodes.
colby_trotter
6 Posts
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September 23rd, 2013 09:00
With Isilon's modular design, a quantitative recommendation may be difficult to come by as the size of the cluster (in density and file count) and specific workflow behaviors will impact system performance.
From a non-technical perspective, this question can sometimes be answered by how the NL400 product was introduced and positioned. If the conversation starts with positioning NL400 as the "low cost" Isilon solution, this tends to drive to a non-technical solution and probably an incorrect configuration.
Peter_Sero
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September 23rd, 2013 09:00
Thanks, that's all the qualitative view, and there's nothing to object here.
The funny thing is, nobody shows a quantitative scenario.
I understand it this way that such an example might later serve as a reference
in "the wrong situation"... so probably it will simply never show up here.
-- Peter
Peter_Sero
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September 23rd, 2013 09:00
For sure that's exactly the point, any example could be mistaken as a recommendation, outside the original context.
The pity is that the nice modular design and mostly linear scaling should make quantitative considerations easier than with other designs.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion!
-- Peter
nate_anth
20 Posts
1
September 27th, 2013 10:00
Here is another qualitative view... Another point I personally take into consideration with NL clusters, especially smaller clusters, is how many of the bells and whistles (licensed features) are going to be used. With NLnodes having somewhat less CPU cores and memory than their X or S counterparts, as well as no capability for SSD's, this can be a consideration to take in addition to front end workload. Sometimes the NL's simply don't have the cycles to complete all the things that our features ask of them (Replciation, Snapshots, AV Scans, FSAnalyze, Quotas, etc).
This of course is with the current version of OneFS 7.0, and may even be mitigated in future versions of OneFS.