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Will
Guest
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 Posted:
Sat Feb 26, 2005 8:03 am Post subject:
120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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What is the minimum cost solution for running 120 hosts at wire speed on
GigE? I am thinking that something like two used Foundry or Extreme
switches would do this at lowest cost.
--
Will |
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Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Feb 26, 2005 6:09 pm Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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"Will" <DELETE_westes@earthbroadcast.com> wrote:
| Quote: | What is the minimum cost solution for running 120 hosts at wire speed on
GigE?
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What are you going to _do_ with 50 terabytes per hour? |
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Al Dykes
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Feb 26, 2005 6:46 pm Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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In article <s4t021dld1n0kmj1ojp4pl2t94spv5imbs@4ax.com>,
<William P.N. Smith> wrote:
| Quote: | "Will" <DELETE_westes@earthbroadcast.com> wrote:
What is the minimum cost solution for running 120 hosts at wire speed on
GigE?
What are you going to _do_ with 50 terabytes per hour?
|
You first cost may be buying new hosts. A good desktop PC can't fill
a GbE pipe. Or so I'm told.
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. |
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Randy Howard
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Feb 26, 2005 7:03 pm Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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In article <cvpuj2$98u$1@panix5.panix.com>, adykes@panix.com says...
| Quote: | In article <s4t021dld1n0kmj1ojp4pl2t94spv5imbs@4ax.com>,
William P.N. Smith> wrote:
"Will" <DELETE_westes@earthbroadcast.com> wrote:
What is the minimum cost solution for running 120 hosts at wire speed on
GigE?
What are you going to _do_ with 50 terabytes per hour?
You first cost may be buying new hosts. A good desktop PC can't fill
a GbE pipe. Or so I'm told.
|
Many can, but not with conventional "off the shelf" applications.
Disk I/O is usually a major factor, unless you're just beaming
data to/from RAM for fun.
--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"Making it hard to do stupid things often makes it hard
to do smart ones too." -- Andrew Koenig |
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Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Feb 26, 2005 8:08 pm Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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adykes@panix.com (Al Dykes) wrote:
| Quote: | A good desktop PC can't fill
a GbE pipe. Or so I'm told.
|
I can get 913 megabits per second between two P4-2.4GHz machines with
integrated network controllers on their 800MHz FSB, but that's with
ttcpw, which isn't very interesting...
Still, the original question doesn't make any sense, as doing
something useful with 50 terabytes per hour is going to suck up a lot
more horsepower and disk speed than any "desktop" machine can deal
with in this decade. |
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Al Dykes
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Feb 26, 2005 8:32 pm Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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In article <a14121poc1g1tmianhiadsl1dd6hco6m72@4ax.com>,
<William P.N. Smith> wrote:
| Quote: | adykes@panix.com (Al Dykes) wrote:
A good desktop PC can't fill
a GbE pipe. Or so I'm told.
I can get 913 megabits per second between two P4-2.4GHz machines with
integrated network controllers on their 800MHz FSB, but that's with
ttcpw, which isn't very interesting...
Still, the original question doesn't make any sense, as doing
something useful with 50 terabytes per hour is going to suck up a lot
more horsepower and disk speed than any "desktop" machine can deal
with in this decade.
|
To be fair, the OP didn't say "desktop", he didn;t say anything. Maybe
he's got a Linux cluster, which can use lots of bandwidth talking to
itself. From what I hear network latency is a really big issue for
workload performance and the brand (and cost) of the switch is very
important.
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. |
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Robert Redelmeier
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:12 pm Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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Randy Howard <randyhoward@fooverizonbar.net> wrote:
| Quote: | You first cost may be buying new hosts. A good desktop
PC can't fill a GbE pipe. Or so I'm told.
Many can, but not with conventional "off the shelf"
applications. Disk I/O is usually a major factor,
unless you're just beaming data to/from RAM for fun.
|
RAM-to-RAM is a big application for compute clusters.
AFAIK, most desktops cannot get GbE wirespeed, unless
their controller is on something faster than a PCI bus.
The usual limit there is around 300 Mbit/s, mostly
caused by limited PCI burst length and long setup.
-- Robert |
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Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:14 pm Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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adykes@panix.com (Al Dykes) wrote:
| Quote: | To be fair, the OP didn't say "desktop", he didn;t say anything.
|
True, we're getting off the original subject. I doubt there's a
machine in existance that'll do "wire speed" and do anything useful
with it, though, so now we're left wondering how far off "wire speed"
we can be and still meet the OP's requirements. My 913 megabits was
regular desktop machines talking thru two D-Link DGS-1005D switches,
but the OP wants 120 machines. If there are no other criteria and
this is a homework assignment, then 60 of those at $60 each will
satisfy the criteria. Of course, in that case you don't even need the
switches, so just cabling the machines together will work... 8*} |
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Walter Roberson
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:23 pm Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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In article <p9idnZri3cUevL3fRVn-2w@giganews.com>,
Will <DELETE_westes@earthbroadcast.com> wrote:
:What is the minimum cost solution for running 120 hosts at wire speed on
:GigE? I am thinking that something like two used Foundry or Extreme
:switches would do this at lowest cost.
Amazing coincidence that the Foundry FastIron II just -happens-
to be rated for exactly 120 wire speed gigabit ports.
Somehow, in my network, we never happen to have nice round multiples
of 12 -- we end up with (e.g.) 79 hosts in a wiring closet,
plus a couple of uplinks.
Odd too that one would have 120 gigabit wirespeed hosts in one place
and not be interested in adding a WAN connection, and not be interested
in redundancy...
======
One must be careful with modular architectures, in that often the
switching speed available between modules is not the same as the
switching speed within the same module.
--
IMT made the sky
Fall. |
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James Knott
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Feb 27, 2005 12:45 am Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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William P.N. Smith wrote:
| Quote: | What is the minimum cost solution for running 120 hosts at wire speed on
GigE?
What are you going to do with 50 terabytes per hour?
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Attempt to keep up with the Windows viruses ;-) |
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Will
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:04 am Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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The end user is building a major animation film. Each of 120 workstations
brings a 100GB file to its local file system, processes it for whatever
reason, and then uploads it back to a common server.
Rather than methodically isolate every bottleneck in the application, I
would like to focus this conversation on one of the many bottlenecks, and
that is the network itself. Personally I think the biggest bottleneck is
disk I/O on the server, but that's a different thread. I just want to make
sure that the network itself doesn't become a bottleneck.
--
Will
<William P.N. Smith> wrote in message
news:s4t021dld1n0kmj1ojp4pl2t94spv5imbs@4ax.com...
| Quote: | "Will" <DELETE_westes@earthbroadcast.com> wrote:
What is the minimum cost solution for running 120 hosts at wire speed on
GigE?
What are you going to _do_ with 50 terabytes per hour?
|
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Will
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:08 am Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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FastIron II doesn't support 120 optical ports, so the backplane speed isn't
all that interesting. Sure you could have a tree of switches, but in this
case the 120 hosts happen to all be in racks in the same room, and that's
why I thought an Extreme BlackDiamond or Foundry BigIron might give plenty
of horsepower at neglible cost (assuming you buy used).
--
Will
"Walter Roberson" <roberson@ibd.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca> wrote in message
news:cvq7qk$75t$1@canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca...
| Quote: | In article <p9idnZri3cUevL3fRVn-2w@giganews.com>,
Will <DELETE_westes@earthbroadcast.com> wrote:
:What is the minimum cost solution for running 120 hosts at wire speed on
:GigE? I am thinking that something like two used Foundry or Extreme
:switches would do this at lowest cost.
Amazing coincidence that the Foundry FastIron II just -happens-
to be rated for exactly 120 wire speed gigabit ports.
Somehow, in my network, we never happen to have nice round multiples
of 12 -- we end up with (e.g.) 79 hosts in a wiring closet,
plus a couple of uplinks.
Odd too that one would have 120 gigabit wirespeed hosts in one place
and not be interested in adding a WAN connection, and not be interested
in redundancy...
======
One must be careful with modular architectures, in that often the
switching speed available between modules is not the same as the
switching speed within the same module.
--
IMT made the sky
Fall. |
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| Back to top |
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Arnold Nipper
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:20 am Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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On 27.02.2005 01:04 Will wrote
| Quote: | The end user is building a major animation film. Each of 120 workstations
brings a 100GB file to its local file system, processes it for whatever
reason, and then uploads it back to a common server.
Rather than methodically isolate every bottleneck in the application, I
would like to focus this conversation on one of the many bottlenecks, and
that is the network itself. Personally I think the biggest bottleneck is
disk I/O on the server, but that's a different thread. I just want to make
sure that the network itself doesn't become a bottleneck.
|
The most interesting: what is the network interface of the common
server? It has to cope with 120 Gbps, hasn't it?
Arnold
--
Arnold Nipper, AN45 |
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Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Feb 27, 2005 6:14 am Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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"Will" <DELETE_westes@earthbroadcast.com> wrote:
| Quote: | The end user is building a major animation film. Each of 120 workstations
brings a 100GB file to its local file system, processes it for whatever
reason, and then uploads it back to a common server.
|
So you need a server with a 120 gigabit NIC, and a server port on your
switch of the same speed?
Again, if 90% is good enough, then SOHO unmanaged switches are good
enough. If the network is faster than your disks, why spend any brain
cycles on how many nines you can get out of your network?
You are talking millions of dollars worth of hardware, why ask this
kind of question on Usenet? [FWIW, the upload-process-download thing
sounds really inefficient...] |
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Will
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Feb 27, 2005 6:23 am Post subject:
Re: 120 Hosts Running GigE at Wire Speed Minimum Cost |
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Clearly the disk and network I/O bottlenecks at the file servers are big.
But that's another thread. The only thing I'm concerned about in the
current thread is how to cheaply guarantee that the network itself is not a
bottleneck for the servers processing information that they bring down from
the file servers.
--
Will
"Arnold Nipper" <arnold-200502@nipper.de> wrote in message
news:42211250.90008@nipper.de...
| Quote: | On 27.02.2005 01:04 Will wrote
The most interesting: what is the network interface of the common
server? It has to cope with 120 Gbps, hasn't it? |
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