Executive Summary - Dell PowerEdge EL Manual

Improving NFS Performance on HPC Clusters with Dell Fluid Cache for DAS

Executive Summary

Most High Performance Computing clusters use some form of a Network File System (NFS) based storage
solution for user data. Easy to configure and administer, free with virtually all Linux distributions, and
well-tested and reliable, NFS has many advantages. Use of nearline SAS drives for backend storage
provides large capacity and good performance at a reasonable cost, but with an inherent performance
limitation for random I/O patterns.
This technical white paper describes how to improve I/O performance in such a NFS storage solution
with the use of Dell Fluid Cache for DAS (DFC) technology. It describes the solution and presents
cluster-level measured results for several I/O patterns. These results quantify the performance
improvements possible with DFC, especially for random I/O patterns. This white paper also includes a
how-to recipe in the Appendix that provides step-by-step instructions on building the solution.
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