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 Post subject: Infiniband Support
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 5:11 pm 
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Joined: Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:35 pm
Posts: 6
Does NASLite-M2 support Infiniband for networking? Other than the one built into the mother board of some SuperMicro? I think that was all I could find. We have Mellanox ConnectX EN , ConnectX VPI, ConnectX-2 EN & VPI. Would love to use it with NASLite-M2.


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 Post subject: Re: Infiniband Support
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:15 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
Posts: 1688
Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
You are very funny!

The answer is "no" to the best of my knowledge.

Really, why would you want Infiniband in the first place? 10Gig Ethernet is the more likely choice. Fact is that you will not really get the bandwidth you think since there are so many potential bottlenecks that might hinder performance. If you are thinking that you are going to roll your self a Panasas or EMC storage array with NASLite at the core think again. They throw big hardware and highly tuned firmware at these things, not basic server MBs with Infiniband on board and some basic NAS package tuned up...

The sweet spot for NASLite is basic, reliable, and fast Network Attached Storage. Basic performance with a decent hardware array controller and 4 basic drives in a RAID5 config over 1Gig Ethernet is about 80+MB/sec. More and faster drives and you can expect to get over 100MB/sec.

Assuming that you had a bunch more platters spinning and a fast hardware RAID card over say 10G Ethernet, I would expect that one might be able to get into the 350-500MB/sec range. I would not hold my breath on that though. Ralph may have rolled a few drivers for the more readily available 10G cards into the latest distro of the appliance software so that is the direction I would be looking in.

Mike


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 Post subject: Re: Infiniband Support
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 11:00 am 
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Joined: Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:35 pm
Posts: 6
mikeiver1 wrote:
You are very funny!

The answer is "no" to the best of my knowledge.

Really, why would you want Infiniband in the first place? 10Gig Ethernet is the more likely choice. Fact is that you will not really get the bandwidth you think since there are so many potential bottlenecks that might hinder performance. If you are thinking that you are going to roll your self a Panasas or EMC storage array with NASLite at the core think again. They throw big hardware and highly tuned firmware at these things, not basic server MBs with Infiniband on board and some basic NAS package tuned up...

The sweet spot for NASLite is basic, reliable, and fast Network Attached Storage. Basic performance with a decent hardware array controller and 4 basic drives in a RAID5 config over 1Gig Ethernet is about 80+MB/sec. More and faster drives and you can expect to get over 100MB/sec.

Assuming that you had a bunch more platters spinning and a fast hardware RAID card over say 10G Ethernet, I would expect that one might be able to get into the 350-500MB/sec range. I would not hold my breath on that though. Ralph may have rolled a few drivers for the more readily available 10G cards into the latest distro of the appliance software so that is the direction I would be looking in.

Mike



I am sorry, I thought this was a serious forum and not one where people that know nothing about what you are doing, try to guess then attempt to take apart and criticize what they think can or cannot be done. I asked a valid question and I will seek my own council when it come to what or how I apply things. I think your reply is the height of arrogance. You know nothing about me or my experience.


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 Post subject: Re: Infiniband Support
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 12:03 pm 
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Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2007 2:45 am
Posts: 485
Location: France
MDCollins wrote:
I think your reply is the height of arrogance. You know nothing about me or my experience.


It seems that you don't know Mike neither ;) He is one of the best on the forum and knows exactly what he says, has built many high end servers and gives always very accurate help. If you read him again, he just said that NL was not the best software for the type of speed and hardware you want to use.

Regards

Robby


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 Post subject: Re: Infiniband Support
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 1:46 pm 
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Joined: Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:35 pm
Posts: 6
robrub wrote:
MDCollins wrote:
I think your reply is the height of arrogance. You know nothing about me or my experience.


It seems that you don't know Mike neither ;) He is one of the best on the forum and knows exactly what he says, has built many high end servers and gives always very accurate help. If you read him again, he just said that NL was not the best software for the type of speed and hardware you want to use.

Regards

Robby



You are absolutely correct. I make no assumptions about the gentleman's experience or knowledge. I appreciate you post.
I just wish he had assumed the same position. I did re read his post. His response I would summarize as he didn't know. Everything else looks to be personal bios and opinion. I have made a pretty decent living over the last 30+ years in the computer industry. A lot of it revolving around networking, primarily Cisco. And more recently (last 7 years) more visualization. While not huge, some projects have been environments larger than average (40+ locations with over 4000 users). I don't say this to brag, just pointing out I am not a new in the field. I have also been using NASLite for at least 5 years both at home and as backup storage at smaller to mid size companies with NAS storage exceeding 50TB. So I also really believe in the product, its great. It has its limitations but is a really solid well design product. So when I leave a post just wondering if IB was supported, I had no idea where that would lead. Not that I need to explain, but just to point out how far off he was with his guessing, this was for a existing client with a existing install. If a company already has a IB network infrastructure with mixed usage of IB, but for my purpose NFS and iSCSI being used for for virtualization and shared storage. It would make no sense to tell them they have to reinvest in 10GB ethernet (especially with them using 56Gb IB) just to hook up a single NAS for temporary storage of replicated servers during a forklift upgrade of hardware.


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 Post subject: Re: Infiniband Support
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 6:02 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
Posts: 1688
Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
You getting all butt hurt over my response serves no purpose here. The facts are that you are I suspect the 1/10th of a percent that really knows what you are talking about. Employing NASLite in a production environment is likely a bit out of the scope for the appliance software but is a testament to its versatility and reliability. To the best of my knowledge this appliance software has been aimed at the home user and the small business looking for a very simple and reliable storage solution with support for hardware that is a few iterations behind current. Now you come here, obviously not aware of this fact as your post count is now 5, asking about IB. buddy, 95% of the customers/users have no idea of what you are talking about. Sooo...Every once in a while we get what could only be assumed an enthusiastic kid or a noob looking to try and break all the records for storage transfer rates based around NASLite and enterprise class hardware they pick up on Ebay. (I even have a bit of hardware sitting and waiting for my time.) They want to run 10G E and/or IB and are requesting support for these devices. The reality is that they, and I suspect even my self, would be over their heads trying to implement an IB solution that would do the hardware justice. These generally turn into long running forum exchanges with minimal satisfaction to be had by the person and allot of extra work for both Tony and Ralph. This was you to me. Don't take offense, and don't go crapping all over me either. I wasn't doing it to you and I still won't.

Now, provided your feathers are not to ruffled from what you took as a slight but was not meant to be in any way, there is a very good chance that Tony and Ralph might be interested in rolling a custom version with a driver specific to the hardware you have on hand. Try a private message to them, they can take a bit of time to get back but they are pretty good about helping serious users. The upshot for the other users is that this may help expand the performance potential and the hardware base for all and to me this is nothing but a win for all.

Last but not least,

"I am sorry, I thought this was a serious forum and not one where people that know nothing about what you are doing, try to guess then attempt to take apart and criticize what they think can or cannot be done. I asked a valid question and I will seek my own council when it come to what or how I apply things. I think your reply is the height of arrogance. You know nothing about me or my experience."

There is quite a bit of "arrogance and insult" in the above. I don't have much of an ego to be bruised here so as far as I am concerned it's simply water off a ducks back. I could say more but it would make me sound trite and I hate that so I won't.

Just know that I have more than a bit of experience to pull from. I would also have no qualms about tapping you for specific info if I needed it to speed a process just as I do to my other friends and they do to me. That sir is how I roll as they say.

Best and lighten up, life is to short to get up tight about this kind of crap. OOOOO BEER, gotta go,

Mike


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 Post subject: Re: Infiniband Support
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 6:23 pm 
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Joined: Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:35 pm
Posts: 6
mikeiver1 wrote:
You getting all butt hurt over my response serves no purpose here. The facts are that you are I suspect the 1/10th of a percent that really knows what you are talking about. Employing NASLite in a production environment is likely a bit out of the scope for the appliance software but is a testament to its versatility and reliability. To the best of my knowledge this appliance software has been aimed at the home user and the small business looking for a very simple and reliable storage solution with support for hardware that is a few iterations behind current. Now you come here, obviously not aware of this fact as your post count is now 5, asking about IB. buddy, 95% of the customers/users have no idea of what you are talking about. Sooo...Every once in a while we get what could only be assumed an enthusiastic kid or a noob looking to try and break all the records for storage transfer rates based around NASLite and enterprise class hardware they pick up on Ebay. (I even have a bit of hardware sitting and waiting for my time.) They want to run 10G E and/or IB and are requesting support for these devices. The reality is that they, and I suspect even my self, would be over their heads trying to implement an IB solution that would do the hardware justice. These generally turn into long running forum exchanges with minimal satisfaction to be had by the person and allot of extra work for both Tony and Ralph. This was you to me. Don't take offense, and don't go crapping all over me either. I wasn't doing it to you and I still won't.

Now, provided your feathers are not to ruffled from what you took as a slight but was not meant to be in any way, there is a very good chance that Tony and Ralph might be interested in rolling a custom version with a driver specific to the hardware you have on hand. Try a private message to them, they can take a bit of time to get back but they are pretty good about helping serious users. The upshot for the other users is that this may help expand the performance potential and the hardware base for all and to me this is nothing but a win for all.

Last but not least,

"I am sorry, I thought this was a serious forum and not one where people that know nothing about what you are doing, try to guess then attempt to take apart and criticize what they think can or cannot be done. I asked a valid question and I will seek my own council when it come to what or how I apply things. I think your reply is the height of arrogance. You know nothing about me or my experience."

There is quite a bit of "arrogance and insult" in the above. I don't have much of an ego to be bruised here so as far as I am concerned it's simply water off a ducks back. I could say more but it would make me sound trite and I hate that so I won't.

Just know that I have more than a bit of experience to pull from. I would also have no qualms about tapping you for specific info if I needed it to speed a process just as I do to my other friends and they do to me. That sir is how I roll as they say.

Best and lighten up, life is to short to get up tight about this kind of crap. OOOOO BEER, gotta go,

Mike



Let me be clearer. I asked what I thought was a simple question. Maybe I am getting old. Because I really don't have a lot of emotional energy to spend bantering back and forth over how I must have gotten my feeling hurt. I quite frankly am a bit amused at this point. Perhaps they should offer a paid support option for those us that don't mind paying for quality support. Rather than me having to keep checking back to see if the people that know the software best, the developers, have had a chance to respond. That way I can move on and leave you and your pearls of wisdom to dazzle the others in the forum. Look, I don't know you from Adam. I applaud anyone willing to take time out to help someone. So lets just leave it at that.

Thank you


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 Post subject: Re: Infiniband Support
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:23 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
Posts: 1688
Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
Let me be clear here as well and re-quote from my first response so as not to waste any more of your obviously very precious time.

"The answer is "no" to the best of my knowledge."

To be even clearer, NO Infiniband is not a supported interface on any shipping version of NASLite. I am presently part of the Beta test group but there is not a beta out with support for an Infiniband interface available yet either.

So sorry that I have wasted your so very valuable time.

Also, just to be clear, I do not work for either Tony or Ralph. I pay for my own copies. I simply help out those that are not blessed with your so obvious intellect and stunning breath of knowledge with high performance computing, networking fabrics, and storage arrays.

You bore me so I will no longer waste my time on you. PM Tony or Ralph or I have a better idea...

Mike


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 Post subject: Re: Infiniband Support
PostPosted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 5:59 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
Posts: 1688
Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
Hay Mr. Arrogant,

If your customer is using the sx60xx series of switches, likely since you drop the 56GB IB in your rant and IB is proprietary to mellanox, they are going to be coming out with a firmware upgrade soon that will allow you to plug in an FDR to fibre module that will directly support 10GigE IP traffic.

There are a couple of other ways you could make this happen without the need to buy hardware but you are already aware of these so I won't boar you with them... Then again you know it all so I am likely telling you something you are aware of already. Hope my pearl of wisdom helps.

Mike


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