Cluster File Systems with MX Drivers

Cluster File Systems
with MX Drivers

Cluster file systems, also known as parallel file systems or high-performance file systems, are an excellent method for meeting the demands for high file-system throughput and large data sets for cluster computations. Nearly all cluster file systems can operate over IP networks, including "IP over Myrinet" (IPoM) with either Myrinet-2000 and Myri-10G. However, operation directly over MX provides additional performance and lower host-CPU utilization.

Myricom supports MX drivers for Lustre and PVFS2.

Lustre - Available now, great performance
Starting with version 1.4.6, Lustre switched to using LNET for network communication. LNET supports MX using the MX Lustre Network Driver (MXLND) on both Myri-10G and Myrinet-2000 networks. Lustre using MXLND achieves near line rate for payload (~95%) with low CPU utilization (3-15% depending on client or server, Myri-10G or Myri-2000, reading or writing, etc.). The most recent performance numbers are on the MX-10G page at clusterfs.com. MXLND is available in Lustre CVS and will be available in the release tarballs starting with 1.4.8. README for Lustre-MX.

PVFS2 - Available now, great performance
Myricom has submitted the MX driver for PVFS2. PVFS2 uses the Buffered Message Interface (BMI) for sending data between hosts. BMI can now use MX over either Myri-10G or Myrinet-2000 networks. BMI using MX-10G has very low latency (i.e. for storing or retrieving metadata) and can reach 96% of line rate for bulk IO. BMI-MX is available in PVFS2 CVS and will be included in the 2.6.3 release. README for PVFS2-MX. Performance data for PVFS2-MX over MX_10G is available.

Last updated: 10 July 2007