All true. I wasn't trying to knock DDN or say "it can't be done", it's just (probably) not very efficient or cost effective to buy a 12K with 30 drives (as an example).
The new 7700 looks like a really nice base a small building block. I had forgot about them. There is a good box for adding 4U at a time, and with 60 drives per enclosure, if you saturated it out at ~3 enclosure / 180 drives, you'd have 1PB, which is also a nice round building block size. :thumb up: On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 5:12 PM, Vic Cornell <[email protected]> wrote: > Just to make sure everybody is up to date on this, (I work for DDN BTW): > >> On 19 Jun 2015, at 21:08, Zachary Giles <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> It's comparable to other "large" controller systems. Take the DDN >> 10K/12K for example: You don't just buy one more shelf of disks, or 5 >> disks at a time from Walmart. You buy 5, 10, or 20 trays and populate >> enough disks to either hit your bandwidth or storage size requirement. > > With the 12K you can buy 1,2,3,4,5,,10 or 20. > > With the 7700/Gs7K you can buy 1 ,2 ,3,4 or 5. > > GS7K comes with 2 controllers and 60 disk slots all in 4U, it saturates (with > GPFS scatter) at about 160- 180 NL- SAS disks and you can concatenate as many > of them together as you like. I guess the thing with GPFS is that you can > pick your ideal building block and then scale with it as far as you like. > >> Generally changing from 5 to 10 to 20 requires support to come on-site >> and recable it, and generally you either buy half or all the disks >> slots worth of disks. > > You can start off with as few as 2 disks in a system . We have lots of people > who buy partially populated systems and then sell on capacity to users, > buying disks in groups of 10, 20 or more - thats what the flexibility of > GPFS is all about, yes? > >> The whole system is a building block and you buy >> N of them to get up to 10-20PB of storage. >> GSS is the same way, there are a few models and you just buy a packaged one. >> >> Technically, you can violate the above constraints, but then it may >> not work well and you probably can't buy it that way. >> I'm pretty sure DDN's going to look at you funny if you try to buy a >> 12K with 30 drives.. :) > > Nobody at DDN is going to look at you funny if you say you want to buy > something :-). We have as many different procurement strategies as we have > customers. If all you can afford with your infrastructure money is 30 drives > to get you off the ground and you know that researchers/users will come to > you with money for capacity down the line then a 30 drive 12K makes perfect > sense. > > Most configs with external servers can be made to work. The embedded (12KXE, > GS7K ) are a bit more limited in how you can arrange disks and put services > on NSD servers but thats the tradeoff for the smaller footprint. > > Happy to expand on any of this on or offline. > > Vic > > >> >> For 1PB (small), I guess just buy 1 GSS24 with smaller drives to save >> money. Or, buy maybe just 2 NetAPP / LSI / Engenio enclosure with >> buildin RAID, a pair of servers, and forget GNR. >> Or maybe GSS22? :) >> >> From >> http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=an&subtype=ca&appname=gpateam&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS114-098 >> " >> Current high-density storage Models 24 and 26 remain available >> Four new base configurations: Model 21s (1 2u JBOD), Model 22s (2 2u >> JBODs), Model 24 (4 2u JBODs), and Model 26 (6 2u JBODs) >> 1.2 TB, 2 TB, 3 TB, and 4 TB hard drives available >> 200 GB and 800 GB SSDs are also available >> The Model 21s is comprised of 24 SSD drives, and the Model 22s, 24s, >> 26s is comprised of SSD drives or 1.2 TB hard SAS drives >> " >> >> >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Simon Thompson (Research Computing - >> IT Services) <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> My understanding I that GSS and IBM ESS are sold as pre configured systems. >>> >>> So something like 2x servers with a fixed number of shelves. E.g. A GSS 24 >>> comes with 232 drives. >>> >>> So whilst that might be 1Pb system (large scale), its essentially an >>> appliance type approach and not scalable in the sense that it isn't >>> supported add another storage system. >>> >>> So maybe its the way it has been productised, and perhaps gnr is >>> technically capable of having more shelves added, but if that isn't a >>> supports route for the product then its not something that as a customer >>> I'd be able to buy. >>> >>> Simon >>> ________________________________________ >>> From: [email protected] [[email protected]] >>> on behalf of Marc A Kaplan [[email protected]] >>> Sent: 19 June 2015 19:45 >>> To: gpfsug main discussion list >>> Subject: Re: [gpfsug-discuss] Disabling individual Storage Pools by >>> themselves? How about GPFS Native Raid? >>> >>> OOps... here is the official statement: >>> >>> GPFS Native RAID (GNR) is available on the following: v IBM Power® 775 Disk >>> Enclosure. v IBM System x GPFS Storage Server (GSS). GSS is a >>> high-capacity, high-performance storage solution that combines IBM System x >>> servers, storage enclosures, and drives, software (including GPFS Native >>> RAID), and networking components. GSS uses a building-block approach to >>> create highly-scalable storage for use in a broad range of application >>> environments. >>> >>> I wonder what specifically are the problems you guys see with the "GSS >>> building-block" approach to ... highly-scalable...? >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> gpfsug-discuss mailing list >>> gpfsug-discuss at gpfsug.org >>> http://gpfsug.org/mailman/listinfo/gpfsug-discuss >> >> >> >> -- >> Zach Giles >> [email protected] >> _______________________________________________ >> gpfsug-discuss mailing list >> gpfsug-discuss at gpfsug.org >> http://gpfsug.org/mailman/listinfo/gpfsug-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > gpfsug-discuss mailing list > gpfsug-discuss at gpfsug.org > http://gpfsug.org/mailman/listinfo/gpfsug-discuss -- Zach Giles [email protected] _______________________________________________ gpfsug-discuss mailing list gpfsug-discuss at gpfsug.org http://gpfsug.org/mailman/listinfo/gpfsug-discuss
