On 04/14/2013 09:25 AM, Stas Oskin wrote:
1) If data availability and redundancy is most important, you would go with multiple 2U boxes to minimize cluster impacts in case of any downtime? My general feeling here is that it depends on the size of the cluster. For small clusters, 2U or even 1U boxes may be ideal. For very large clusters, it is probably fine to use a denser chassis. It's all about the ratio of how many nodes are left to absorb the loss when a single node fails. I don't have any hard numbers, but my instinct is that in production I wouldn't want to lose more than about 10% of my cluster if a node dies. So for a 180 TB cluster you would go with a 6 - 8 drives bare-bone? What about 500 TB?
Like I said, it's just my instinct. For a 180TB (raw) cluster you've got some tough choices to make. Some options might include:
1) high density and low cost by just stick a bunch of 3GB drives in 5 2U nodes and make sure you don't fill the cluster past ~75% (which you probably don't want to do from a performance perspective anyway). Just acknowledge that during failure/recovery there's going to be a ton of traffic flying around between the remaining 4 nodes.
2) Lower density (1-2GB) drives and more 2U nodes for higher performance but lower density and greater expense.
3) high eventual density and low eventual cost by buying 2U nodes that are only partially filled with 3TB drives with the assumption that the cluster is going to grow larger down the road.
4) 15 4-drive 1U nodes for less impact during recovery but greater expense and lower density.
All of these options have benefits and downsides. For production cluster I'd want more than 5 nodes, but it wouldn't be the only consideration (cost, density, performance, etc all would play a part).
2) Barring service and SLA, is it really worth taking HP over SuperMicro, or it's simply overpaying for a brand? I've had great experiences with both Supermicro hardware and HP hardware. Products from both companies can work great for Ceph, but they are different companies and have different benefits and downsides. Service, support, and price are all things that may make one or the other a better fit depending on your needs. I see, thanks.
-- Mark Nelson Performance Engineer Inktank _______________________________________________ ceph-users mailing list ceph-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.ceph.com/listinfo.cgi/ceph-users-ceph.com