ScaleIO and Spectre/Meltdown - performance impact?

Question

Afternoon all Is anyone at EMC doing any studies to see what impact we might expect with ScaleIO if we were to apply the patches for various platforms? I see some scare-stories warning of between 5 and 30% impact, and as I think not many people have a spare ScaleIO implementation going, it would be useful to see some results and an impact statement from the vendor. Is this being done? And with what sort of workloads if so? Has anyone else come across any such studies? I spotted this on theregister today (Spectre and Meltdown fixes: How will they affect storage? • The Register) and it brought up some points that might relate to ScaleIO and how it would handle under these circumstances. Jeff Ready: 'I would expect SPC benchmarks (which drive pure storage performance) to be affected the most on systems which utilise software-defined storage via a mid-layer filesystem. CPU utilisation around operations on that filesystem will increase measurably. VSA-based architectures, which most companies in HCI use, fall into this category. Personally, I'm most concerned that with a HyperV installation and VMs galore running on each node, that we may experience significant impact, so it would be good to get some stats before we begin patching. Thanks AW

andyinv · Answer

*taps mic*... hello, is this thing on?

andyinv · Answer

Ah well, looks like I'll have to log an official support request. Surprisingly(?), Dell also haven't responded to my request. Can only assume that that means there will be zero impact, eh ?

andyinv · Answer

Thanks Jonathan It's being investigated under 09882615 Rgds

PowerFlex Mark · Answer

Hi All, This is currently under investigation by Engineering.  They are performing performance tests. This is the latest update. Regards, Mark

C_deMan · Answer

Hi msr, did you receive an update regarding the investigation? regrds,

andyinv · Answer

Hi

Nothing concrete other than has been said above here - that Engineering are investigating.

Is there a more useful impact statement available yet? Surely some internal testing has been done by now?

Thanks

AW

PowerFlex

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