Inline.

J-D

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Miles Spielberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> We're planning out our first Hbase cluster, and we'd like to get some 
> feedback on our proposed hardware configuration. We're intending to use this 
> cluster purely for Hbase; it will not generally be running MapReduce jobs, 
> nor will we be using HDFS for other storage tasks. In addition, our projected 
> total dataset size is <1 TB. Our workload is still unclear, but will likely 
> be roughly 1:1 read:write ratio, with cell sizes <1 KB and significant use of 
> increment().

If your workload is unclear then planning for a whole cluster is a
risky business... unless you overcommit resources.

>
> Here's our current front-runner:
> 2U, 2-socket, 12-core (with HyperThreading for 24 OS-visible threads), 
> probably E5645 (2.4~2.67 GHz) or X5675 (3.06~3.46 GHz)
> 48 GB RAM
> 2x 300 GB 10k SAS in RAID-1 for OS
> 12x 600 GB 15k SAS as JBOD for DataNode
>
> We are thinking of putting in 4 of these as DataNode/HRegionServer machines, 
> with another pair minus the 600GB drives as head nodes. The motivation behind 
> the high-end disks and capacious RAM is that we anticipate being I/O bound, 
> but we're concerned that we may be overspending, and/or selling ourselves 
> short on total capacity. Still, this is a long way from the "commodity 
> hardware" mantra, and we're considering whether we should go with 7200 RPM 
> drives for more capacity and lower cost. It's also a big unit of failure for 
> when the unexpected happens and takes down a node.

We prefer to stay on SATA, but your mileage may vary. Again, testing
actual hardware against your usage pattern would really help making
good decisions. Also with such a low number of nodes any failure will
have a huge impact.

>
> What's the current thinking on disk vs. CPU for pure Hbase usage on modern 
> hardware? How much disk can one core comfortably service? 1x 7200? 2x 7200? 
> 2x 15k?
> Do we want to lean towards more, cheaper nodes? It would also give us more 
> network throughput per disk, which would be nice to speed up re-replication 
> on node failure.

With 12 SAS disks you'll be bound on the network, unless you go with
10GE. We bought new hardware recently which much lower end CPUs (more
energy efficient, a big concern we have at our size) and we have 6
disks per node (one disk has a root partition) using 1GE.

>
> One possibility is to use the same chassis, but leave it half-populated: 
> 1-socket, 6-core, 24 GB RAM, 6x data drives. The question of fast disks vs. 
> big disks and how many still applies.

The HW we got looks like this (each node is 2x L5630, 48gb ram, 6x 2TB):

SM 2U Twin 2 System (Includes 2 motherboard, 1 Chassis with Single
1400W PS, Quick-Quick rail kits, Backplane)
INTEL XEON 4C 2.13GHZ L5630 12M QPI DDR3 S1366
8GB Dual Rank 1333MHZ ECC REG DDR3 - Motherboard compatible
Hitachi 2TB 7200RPM 64MB SATA 6Gbps HDD

So this packs basically 2 nodes in one 2U box. We are going to use
this in both MR and live environments.

>
> Another possibility is to go with 1U units with 4x 1TB drives each, although 
> this would likely mean giving up on RAID-1 for the OS. These would probably 
> be 6-core E5645, with 24 GB RAM. We'd be able to get 10 or so of these. I'm 
> concerned that 4 7200 RPM drives would not be able to keep a 6-core CPU fed, 
> especially with OS load on one of the drives effectively reducing data 
> spindles to ~3.5.

I understand the RAID 1 concern, but with more machines you won't be
affected as much when one dies so maybe bit the bullet, ditch the 2
extra disks and get more machines?

FWIW we are able to max out our current 2x E5520s with 4 disks using
big MR jobs.

>
> I expect that we won't really understand our workload until we have the 
> cluster deployed and loaded, but we'd like to make our first pass more than a 
> shot in the dark. Any feedback you may have is most appreciated.

The workload is really really important, but so is a high number of
nodes. Else you might as well be using MySQL since you won't
beneficiate from HBase's strengths and only suffer its weaknesses.

Hope I helped!

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