Comments on: Inside Skinny On Isilon http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/21/inside-skinny-on-isilon/ Data storage info & analysis Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:41:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Selling IT Wall of Shame: Isilon Systems « ScottRu http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/21/inside-skinny-on-isilon/#comment-113515 Selling IT Wall of Shame: Isilon Systems « ScottRu Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:23:43 +0000 http://storagemojo.com/?p=384#comment-113515 [...] I’ll let you listen to get the money quote (”clustered storage… future”), but will point out simply that for large search engines depending (or planning to depend) on commodity hardware in a distributed environment, clustered storage isn’t the most obvious choice. Also, when the first page of Google results tells me you have >50% profit margins, my pocketbook screams. [...] [...] I’ll let you listen to get the money quote (”clustered storage… future”), but will point out simply that for large search engines depending (or planning to depend) on commodity hardware in a distributed environment, clustered storage isn’t the most obvious choice. Also, when the first page of Google results tells me you have >50% profit margins, my pocketbook screams. [...]

]]> By: Richard http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/21/inside-skinny-on-isilon/#comment-29271 Richard Fri, 23 Feb 2007 03:47:47 +0000 http://storagemojo.com/?p=384#comment-29271 Blake, This is a good start to some simple numbers. ...thank you. It looks like you are getting 30-50% of the available bandwidth, i.e 30MB per disk. I am assuming that this is over 20 Ethernet host channels, i.e. 55 MB per 1 Gbit channel. 1. Is this under ‘read’ or a mixture of read/writes?. What is your write speed ?. 2. Are you running RAID 5 and / or mirrors …if so how many mirrors? 3. What is the 'useable' capacity across your six x 1920 enclosures ? A comment regarding the layout of data and the number of read/write ‘streams’ would help. Blake,
This is a good start to some simple numbers. …thank you.

It looks like you are getting 30-50% of the available bandwidth, i.e 30MB per disk.
I am assuming that this is over 20 Ethernet host channels, i.e. 55 MB per 1 Gbit channel.

1. Is this under ‘read’ or a mixture of read/writes?. What is your write speed ?.
2. Are you running RAID 5 and / or mirrors …if so how many mirrors?
3. What is the ‘useable’ capacity across your six x 1920 enclosures ?

A comment regarding the layout of data and the number of read/write ‘streams’ would help.

]]> By: Blake http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/21/inside-skinny-on-isilon/#comment-29155 Blake Thu, 22 Feb 2007 21:08:21 +0000 http://storagemojo.com/?p=384#comment-29155 Same here. I've been looking at their product for over a year, but finally bought some about 3 months ago. My 20 node cluster (14 acclerators and 6 1920's) maxed out at 2.2 GB / sec (that's gigabytes). I saved that picture to show other "clustered" storage vendors what they are up against. Same here. I’ve been looking at their product for over a year, but finally bought some about 3 months ago. My 20 node cluster (14 acclerators and 6 1920’s) maxed out at 2.2 GB / sec (that’s gigabytes). I saved that picture to show other “clustered” storage vendors what they are up against.

]]> By: Richard http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/21/inside-skinny-on-isilon/#comment-28973 Richard Thu, 22 Feb 2007 12:47:29 +0000 http://storagemojo.com/?p=384#comment-28973 The info is still very ‘skinny’, but at least it confirms that “the product is intended for media servers and other large-file, mostly sequential workloads”. At … http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070207/sfw090.html?.v=83 …they don’t seem to be too shy in stating that they can deliver “10 gigabytes per second of performance in a single file system and single volume”. Anything is possible under “reads”, given enough nodes with correct placement of data …. there is no traffic across their coherency switch. It may be “wise” and easy for them to substantiate this in simple terms….how many nodes… is it purely ‘read’ level performance, etc . “Sujal says that messaging traffic grows linearly as you add nodes”. This may be true for meta-data only, residing in just three places … but what happens to data traffic.... especially under partial and ‘unaligned’ RAID 5 writes … or during reconstructs under R5 reads..? You report .. “Their move downmarket, with the new IQ200, a 3-node cluster listing for less than $40K ”. I really question how much ‘downmarket’ this is…. including how they arrive at the stated 50% margin. Three x 1U chassis, motherboard, single power supply with Ethernet switching. Hardware cost much like 3 x 1U single processor servers …. plus 12 SATA disks at $300 each . .. . and no ‘free’ IB gear is involved here. This is a long way from a ‘commodity’ cluster .... end of comment. The info is still very ‘skinny’, but at least it confirms that “the product is intended for media servers and other large-file, mostly sequential workloads”.

At … http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070207/sfw090.html?.v=83 …they don’t seem to be too shy in stating that they can deliver “10 gigabytes per second of performance in a single file system and single volume”.

Anything is possible under “reads”, given enough nodes with correct placement of data …. there is no traffic across their coherency switch.

It may be “wise” and easy for them to substantiate this in simple terms….how many nodes… is it purely ‘read’ level performance, etc .

“Sujal says that messaging traffic grows linearly as you add nodes”.

This may be true for meta-data only, residing in just three places … but what happens to data traffic…. especially under partial and ‘unaligned’ RAID 5 writes … or during reconstructs under R5 reads..?

You report ..
“Their move downmarket, with the new IQ200, a 3-node cluster listing for less than $40K ”. I really question how much ‘downmarket’ this is…. including how they arrive at the stated 50% margin.

Three x 1U chassis, motherboard, single power supply with Ethernet switching. Hardware cost much like 3 x 1U single processor servers …. plus 12 SATA disks at $300 each . .. . and no ‘free’ IB gear is involved here.

This is a long way from a ‘commodity’ cluster …. end of comment.

]]> By: Javier http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/21/inside-skinny-on-isilon/#comment-28934 Javier Thu, 22 Feb 2007 11:02:52 +0000 http://storagemojo.com/?p=384#comment-28934 Hi, I've been an Isilon cluster for almost a year, we have been very happy with the product. We only have a small 4 node 3000i system (12 TB raw, 9 usable) and we work with big media files (a hour of video is 25GB), we get around 1.2Gbps write speed and almost the same on read speed, of course, all is secuential and mostly over FTP or Samba. Javier Hi,

I’ve been an Isilon cluster for almost a year, we have been very happy with the product. We only have a small 4 node 3000i system (12 TB raw, 9 usable) and we work with big media files (a hour of video is 25GB), we get around 1.2Gbps write speed and almost the same on read speed, of course, all is secuential and mostly over FTP or Samba.

Javier

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