Solving the HPC I/O Bottleneck: Sun Lustre Storage System 
by Sean Cochrane, Ken Kutzer, and Lawrence McIntosh
April 2009
This paper describes the Sun™ Lustre Storage System, a simple-to-deploy storage environment based on the Lustre file system, Sun Fire™ servers and Sun Open Storage platforms:
• "Target environments" introduces target environments for the Sun Lustre Storage System
• "The Lustre file system" provides an overview of the Lustre file system.
• "Sun Lustre Storage System overview" introduces the Sun Lustre Storage System, including design considerations and hardware and software components.
• "Performance evaluation" details data obtained from a performance evaluation of the Sun Lustre Storage System.
Contents
- Solving the HPC I/O Bottleneck: Sun Lustre Storage System
- Target environments
- The Lustre file system
- Lustre file system design
- Sun and Open Storage
- Sun Lustre Storage System overview
- Design considerations
- Hardware components
- HA MDS module
- Standard OSS module
- HA OSS module
- Software components
- Performance evaluation
- HA OSS testing and results
- IOZone benchmark runs
- Sample IOzone benchmark output
- HA OSS benchmark configuration
- RAID and disk configuration
- Standard OSS testing and results
- IOzone benchmark runs
- IOzone benchmark output
- Standard OSS benchmark configuration
- HA OSS testing and results
- Proven scalability at TACC
- Summary
Sean Cochrane is a Principal Field Engineer in Sun's Global HPC Sales organization and is the primary architect for the Sun Lustre Storage System at Sun Microsystems. Sean has been at Sun since 1997 when he joined Sun from the University of Utah where he helped to establish the state wide network for education. Sean holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and has over 25 years of experience in the computer industry.
Ken Kutzer is the Marketing Team Lead, Storage for High Performance Computing and works within the Systems Marketing Group at Sun. He is responsible for driving the strategy and efforts to help raise customer and market awareness of Sun's innovative storage products and technologies for High Performance Computing. Ken holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and has over 15 years in the computer and storage industries.
Larry McIntosh is a Principal Systems Engineer at Sun Microsystems and works within the Global Engineering Solutions Group. He is responsible for designing and implementing high performance computing technologies at Sun's largest customers. Larry has 35 years of experience in the computer, communications, and storage industries and has been a software developer and consultant in the commercial, government, education and research sectors as well as a computer science college professor. Larry's recent work has included the deployment of the Ranger system servicing the National Science Foundation and Researchers at the Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) in Austin, Texas.
The authors would like to recognize the following individuals for their contributions to this article:
• Dr. Tommy Minyard, Associate Director Advanced Computing Systems, Texas Advanced Computing Center
• Dr. Karl Schulz, Associate Director High Performance Computing, Texas Advanced Computing Center
• Michael Berg, Atul Vidwansa, Greg Drobish, Joey Jablonski, Kelly Lewandowski, Craig Flaskerud, John Fragalla, Warner Hersey, Shuichi Ihara, Bryon Neitzel and Peter Bojanic at Sun Microsystems
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