| RE: Researching: Isilon and alternatives | |||
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Posted by: Phil Haskell  Date: 03-09-2010, 18:10:PM |
I don't want to press the edge on this blog (I respect the independence) but as an Ibrix Alumni am delighted with the simplification, density and pricing that being part of HP has enabled - and the performance is still there and increasing. (Dr. D's loss was a personal - very personal - disappointment)). Thanks for your tolerance. -----Original Message----- From: studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com [mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com] On Behalf Of Kim Pearce Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 5:20 PM To: discuss@studiosysadmins.com Subject: Re: Researching: Isilon and alternatives Dr. D Studios evaluated IBRIX roughly a year ago (along with Isilon and BlueArc). IBRIX faired well in testing (the Dell/EMC/IBRIX provided system had an EMC CLARiiON CX4-960 with half a tray of solid state disk for IBRIX file-system meta-data, and five Dell PE2950s each with 32GB of RAM) IBRIX was subsequently purchased by HP and turned into X9000, and I'd have to agree with Phil that X9000 would is definitely worth a place in any evaluation round-up, but ultimately Dr. D chose BlueArc because we decided that it had:
...than the Dell/EMC/IBRIX solution On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 5:58 AM, Haskell, Phil T phil.haskell@hp.com wrote: > If you truly need small file multi-threaded performance talk with someone about the HP X9000 series. > > -----Original Message----- > From: studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com [mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Klaassen > Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 12:49 PM > To: discuss@studiosysadmins.com > Subject: RE: Researching: Isilon and alternatives > > I think any of the vendors we're talking about here would struggle with a workload like that. ?It's not because they sell bad servers; it's the nature of platter-based hard drives. ?Let's do some math with the Fastest Hard Drive In The World (according to the press release), a 15K SCSI drive with a 3.2ms seek time: > > 1 second / 3.2 milliseconds = 312.5 seeks per second > > 312.5 seeks per second * 2KB per seek = 625KB/second per hard drive > > Damn, that's low. ?Let's try with 4KB files: > > 312.5 seeks per second * 4KB per seek = 1250KB/second per hard drive > > If you're constantly seeking for 4KB files, that's as fast as a single hard drive (a damn fast hard drive) is going to be able to pump out the data. ?Now, let's say you want to fill up a 1 GigE network pipe coming out of that server: > > 1Gb/s = 128MB/s = 131072KB/s > > 131072 / 1250 = 104.9 hard drives needed > > With files that small, you'd need over one hundred 15K hard drives just to fill a single GigE network connection. ?I've never used Isilon, so I don't know if it's great or if it's shit, but in this case Isilon definitely can't be blamed for poor performance. ?Any vendor would've struggled with a workload like that. > > Andrew > > > --- On Tue, 3/9/10, Dave Algar dalgar@rainmaker.com wrote: > >> The entire >> project used a little over 11TB >> and had 53 million files for an average of just over 200KB >> for file size. >> I don't have specifics on how small the files >> actually got but I do >> recall seeing a lot of files in the 2 to 4k range.? At >> the time the >> decision was made by the pipeline developer to use a lot of >> small files and >> bake out a lot of things for quicker load times. >> Maybe it worked for him >> but it didn't for me. >> >> >> >> >> Dave >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> From: >> studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com >> [mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com] >> On Behalf Of Greg >> Whynott >> >> Sent: Monday, >> March 08, 2010 2:50 >> PM >> >> To: ' >> discuss@studiosysadmins.com ' >> >> Subject: Re: >> Researching: Isilon >> and alternatives >> >> >> >> >> >> What size is small? Just >> wondering as from a fs level a meg >> is considered large usually. >> >> G >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> From: >> studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com >> studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com >> >> >> To: >> discuss@studiosysadmins.com >> < discuss@studiosysadmins.com > >> >> Sent: Mon Mar >> 08 17:46:32 2010 >> >> Subject: RE: >> Researching: Isilon >> and alternatives >> >> Hi >> Ian, >> >> >> >> >> We have >> both Isilon and Bluearc.? I >> have heard that a lot of people are quite happy with their >> Isilon system but >> our experience didn't go that well.? I think a >> lot has to do with >> your file size.? At the time we had an enormous amount >> of small files and >> the Isilon didn't fare too well.? We had 24 >> nodes at the time with >> about 250 to 300 artists.? At the time they did not >> have a backup node so >> all we had were 1Gb connections available.? There were >> no 10Gb nodes at >> the time so balancing user's across nodes was another >> issue. >> Troubleshooting problems with a lot of nodes wasn't a >> lot of fun. >> They do have some nice features like quota's on a >> directory or snapshots >> but it just didn't handle our load.? We had >> IQ3000 nodes. >> >> >> >> >> Dave >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> From: >> studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com >> [mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-bounces@mailman.studiosysadmins.com] >> On Behalf Of Ian >> Haskin >> >> Sent: Monday, >> March 08, 2010 2:01 >> PM >> >> To: >> discuss@studiosysadmins.com >> >> Subject: >> Researching: Isilon and >> alternatives >> >> >> >> >> >> Hey everyone, >> >> >> >> I've been looking into Isilon >> storage and I'm quite impressed with >> their sales-pitch.? Can anyone share their experiences >> with Isilon products >> or any other products that compete/compare with >> them? >> >> >> >> >> >> Thanks, >> >> >> >> Ian Haskin >> >> TOPIX >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> This >> e-mail and any attachments are >> intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and >> may contain >> confidential information. If you are not the intended >> recipient of this e-mail, >> you are hereby notified any dissemination, distribution or >> copying of this >> email and any attachments is strictly prohibited. If you >> receive this email in >> error, please immediately notify the sender by return email >> and permanently >> delete the original, any copy and any printout thereof. The >> integrity and >> security of e-mail cannot be guaranteed. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> This e-mail and any attachments are intended only for use >> by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain >> confidential information. ?If you are not the intended >> recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified any >> dissemination, distribution or copying of this email and any >> attachments is strictly prohibited. ?If you receive this >> email in error, please immediately notify the sender by >> return email and permanently delete the original, any copy >> and any printout thereof. ?The integrity and security of >> e-mail cannot be guaranteed. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -----Inline Attachment Follows----- >> >> _ >> StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list >> StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com >> http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss >> > > > ? ? ? > Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! 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