SPEC SFS®2014_swbuild Result

Copyright © 2016-2019 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation

IBM Corporation SPEC SFS2014_swbuild = 160 Builds
IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2 with Elastic Storage Server GL6 Overall Response Time = 1.21 msec


Performance

Business
Metric
(Builds)
Average
Latency
(msec)
Builds
Ops/Sec
Builds
MB/Sec
160.0508000127
320.16016001254
480.27024002381
640.39032003508
800.71040004635
961.16048004762
1121.70056004889
1282.270640051016
1442.690720041143
1602.970800031270
Performance Graph


Product and Test Information

IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2 with Elastic Storage Server GL6
Tested byIBM Corporation
Hardware AvailableDecember 2014
Software AvailableMay 2016
Date TestedApril 2016
License Number11
Licensee LocationsAlmaden, CA USA

IBM Spectrum Scale helps solve the challenge of explosive growth of unstructured data against a flat IT budget.

Spectrum Scale provides unified file and object software-defined storage for high performance, large scale workloads on-premises or in the cloud. Built upon IBM's award winning General Parallel Filesystem (GPFS), Spectrum Scale includes the protocols, services and performance required by many industries, Technical Computing, Big Data, HDFS and business critical content repositories. IBM Spectrum Scale provides world-class storage management with extreme scalability, flash accelerated performance, and automatic policy-based storage tiering from flash through disk to tape, reducing storage costs up to 90% while improving security and management efficiency in cloud, big data & analytics environments.

IBM Elastic Storage Server is an optimized disk storage solution bundled with IBM hardware and innovative IBM Spectrum Scale RAID technology that can perform fast background disk rebuilds in minutes with no impact to application performance. This solution also ensures data integrity from the application down to the storage solution with end to end checksum and provides unsurpassed end-to-end data availability, reliability and integrity with the data efficient advanced erasure coding.

Solution Under Test Bill of Materials

Item NoQtyTypeVendorModel/NameDescription
18Spectrum Scale ClientIBMX3650-M4Spectrum Scale client nodes.
21Elastic Storage Server GL6IBM5146-GL6The ESS-GL6 contains 8247-22L IBM Elastic Storage Server nodes and 6 DCS3700E storage expansion drawers. The storage expansion drawers were populated with a total of 348 2TB 7200 RPM NLSAS drives. The ESS also included 3 optional two-port (feature code #EL3D) FDR InfiniBand adapters per server node.
32InfiniBand SwitchMellanoxSX603636-port non-blocking managed 56 Gbps InfiniBand/VPI SDN switch.
41Ethernet SwitchSMC NetworksSMC8150L250-port 10/100/1000 Gbps Ethernet switch.
58InfiniBand AdapterMellanoxMCX456A-F2-port PCI FDR InfiniBand adapter used in the client nodes.

Configuration Diagrams

  1. Solution Under Test Diagram - Topological View
  2. Solution Under Test Diagram - Physical View

Component Software

Item NoComponentTypeName and VersionDescription
1Client NodesSpectrum Scale File System4.2.0.3The Spectrum Scale File System is a distributed file system that runs on both the Elastic Storage Server nodes and client nodes to form a cluster. The cluster allows for the creation and management of single namespace file systems.
2Client NodesOperating SystemRed Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 for x86_64The operating system on the client nodes was 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7.2.
3Elastic Storage ServerStorage Server4.0The ESS version 4.0 provides all of the necessary software to be compatible with Spectrum Scale version 4.2.0.3 running on the client nodes.

Hardware Configuration and Tuning - Physical

Spectrum Scale Client Nodes
Parameter NameValueDescription
verbsPortsmlx5_0/1/1 mlx5_1/1/2InfiniBand device names and port numbers.
verbsRdmaenableEnables InfiniBand RDMA transfers between Spectrum Scale client nodes and Elastic Storage Server nodes.
verbsRdmaSend1Enables the use of InfiniBand RDMA for most Spectrum Scale daemon-to-daemon communication.
Hyper-ThreadingdisabledDisables the use of two threads per core in the CPU. The setting was changed in the BIOS menus of the client nodes.

Hardware Configuration and Tuning Notes

The first three configuration parameters were set using the "mmchconfig" command on one of the nodes in the cluster. The verbs settings in the table above allow for efficient use of the InfiniBand infrastructure. The settings determine when data are transferred over IP and when they are transferred using the verbs protocol. The InfiniBand traffic went through two switches, item 3 in the Bill of Materials. The last parameter disabled Hyper-Threading on the client nodes.

Software Configuration and Tuning - Physical

Spectrum Scale Client Nodes
Parameter NameValueDescription
maxFilesToCache11MSpecifies the number of inodes to cache for recently used files that have been closed.
maxMBpS10000Specifies an estimate of how many megabytes of data can be transferred per second into or out of a single node.
maxStatCache0Specifies the number of inodes to keep in the stat cache.
pagepool16GSpecifies the size of the cache on each node.
pagepoolMaxPhysMemPct90Percentage of physical memory that can be assigned to the page pool
workerThreads1024Controls the maximum number of concurrent file operations at any one instant, as well as the degree of concurrency for flushing dirty data and metadata in the background and for prefetching data and metadata.
Elastic Storage Server
Parameter NameValueDescription
nsdRAIDTracks1MSpecifies the number of tracks in the Spectrum Scale Native RAID buffer pool

Software Configuration and Tuning Notes

The configuration parameters were set using the "mmchconfig" command on one of the nodes in the cluster. Both the client nodes and the ESS used mostly default tuning parameters. The parameters listed in the table above reflect values that might be used in a typical metadata intensive environment with many small files.

Service SLA Notes

There were no opaque services in use.

Storage and Filesystems

Item NoDescriptionData ProtectionStable StorageQty
1348 2 TB NLSAS drives in the ESS.Spectrum Scale Native RAID declustered arraysYes1
2300 GB 10K mirrored HDD pair in Spectrum Scale client nodes used to store the OS.RAID-1No8
3600 GB 10K SAS mirrored HDD pair in ESS nodes used to store the OS.RAID-1No2
Number of Filesystems1
Total Capacity32 TiB
Filesystem TypeSpectrum Scale File System

Filesystem Creation Notes

A single Spectrum Scale file system was created with a 1 MiB block size for both data and metadata, a 4 KiB inode size, and a 32 MiB log size. The file system was spread across all of the Network Shared Disks (NSDs) defined by the ESS. Each client node and ESS node mounted the file system.

The client nodes each had an ext4 file system that hosted the operating system.

Storage and Filesystem Notes

The ESS was configured with two declustered arrays each containing 174 2TB NLSAS drives. The arrays were configured to tolerate the failure of any 2 drives or any single DCS3700E enclosure.

Two NSDs were created using 2 16 TiB 8+2P vdisks, 1 per declustered array, and were designated to hold Spectrum Scale file system data and metadata. Each vdisk was created within a declustered array and the blocks of the vdisk were spread across all the available physical disks in the array.

The cluster used a two-tier architecture. The client nodes perform file-level operations. The data requests are transmitted to the ESS nodes. The ESS nodes perform the block-level operations. In Spectrum Scale terminology the load generators are NSD clients and the ESS nodes are NSD servers. The NSDs were the storage devices specified when creating the Spectrum Scale file system.

Transport Configuration - Physical

Item NoTransport TypeNumber of Ports UsedNotes
11 GbE cluster network10Each node connects to a 1 GbE administration network with MTU=1500
2FDR InfiniBand cluster network28Client nodes have 2 FDR links, and each ESS node has 6 FDR links to a shared FDR IB cluster network

Transport Configuration Notes

The 1 GbE network was used for administrative purposes. All benchmark traffic flowed through the Mellanox SX6036 InfiniBand switch. Each client node had two active InfiniBand ports. Both the 1 GbE port and the first InfiniBand port were used by Spectrum Scale for inter-node communication. Each client node InfiniBand port was on a separate FDR fabric for RDMA connections between nodes.

Switches - Physical

Item NoSwitch NameSwitch TypeTotal Port CountUsed Port CountNotes
1SMC 8150L210/100/1000 Gbps Ethernet5010The default configuration was used on the switch.
2Mellanox SX6036 #1FDR InfiniBand3614The default configuration was used on the switch.
3Mellanox SX6036 #2FDR InfiniBand3614The default configuration was used on the switch.

Processing Elements - Physical

Item NoQtyTypeLocationDescriptionProcessing Function
116CPUSpectrum Scale client nodesIntel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650 v2 @ 2.60GHz 8-coreSpectrum Scale client, load generator, device drivers
24CPUElastic Storage ServerIBM POWER8(R) 10-Core 3.42 GHzSpectrum Scale NSD server, Spectrum Scale Native RAID, device drivers

Processing Element Notes

Each of the Spectrum Scale client nodes had 2 physical processors. Each processor had 8 cores with one thread per core. Each ESS node had 2 physical processors. Each processor had 10 cores with SMT2 enabled by default.

Memory - Physical

DescriptionSize in GiBNumber of InstancesNonvolatileTotal GiB
Spectrum Scale client node system memory1288V1024
ESS node system memory2322V464
ESS node integrated NVRAM module42NV8
Grand Total Memory Gibibytes1496

Memory Notes

In the client nodes Spectrum Scale reserves a portion of the physical memory for file data and metadata caching. A portion of the memory is also reserved for buffers used for node to node communication.

In the ESS nodes Spectrum Scale reserves a portion of the physical memory for caching block data. The integrated NVRAM module is used to store Fast Write data and some block-level log data.

Stable Storage

The ESS nodes each have an NVRAM that is used to temporarily store some of the modified data before being written to the backend disk. Modified data designated as "fast writes" are stored initially in the NVRAM, while standard modified data go directly to the backend disk. The data in the NVRAM is mirrored between the nodes. In the case of a single node failure, the write data and any destaging to backend disk is handled by the still active node. In the case of a general power outage a capacitor on the PCI card holds enough charge to keep the card powered long enough for the NVRAM data to be destaged to a stable flash medium on the card. All of the modified writes in the benchmark are handled by the ESS.

Solution Under Test Configuration Notes

The solution under test was a Spectrum Scale cluster optimized for small file and metadata intensive environments. The NSD client nodes were also the load generators for the benchmark. The benchmark was executed from one of the client nodes. All of the Spectrum Scale nodes were connected to a 1 GbE switch and two FDR InfiniBand switches. The Elastic Storage Server consisted of the NSD server nodes and 348 NLSAS drives in 6 disk expansion drawers attached to the nodes via 6 Gbps SAS connections. Each ESS node had a SAS connection to each DCS3700E disk storage enclosure. Each ESS node also included a PCI attached NVRAM card. The data in each NVRAM card was mirrored between the ESS nodes, which communicated with each other over the InfiniBand network.

Other Solution Notes

Data protection and integrity features of the ESS were enabled during the benchmark execution. These features include disk scrubbing, NSD checksums and version numbers, double disk failure tolerance, and single storage enclosure fault tolerance.

Dataflow

The 8 Spectrum Scale client nodes were the load generators for the benchmark. Each load generator had access to the single namespace Spectrum Scale file system. The benchmark accessed a single mount point on each load generator. In turn each of mount points corresponded to a single shared base directory in the file system. The NSD clients process the file operations, and the data requests to and from disk were serviced by the Elastic Storage Server.

Other Notes

IBM, IBM Spectrum Scale, IBM Elastic Storage, Power, and POWER8 are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide.

Intel and Xeon are trademarks of the Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Mellanox is a registered trademark of Mellanox Ltd.

Other Report Notes

None


Generated on Wed Mar 13 16:53:24 2019 by SpecReport
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