Gear6, accelerating storage for real time application performance, today announced breakthrough I/O performance results for large scale network-based caching. These achievements demonstrate the unique ability of centralized storage caching to keep pace with demanding aggregate I/O requirements of massive compute grids for a range of workload profiles. Throughput testing of the CACHEfx appliance achieved precedent-setting 872,291 IOPS with an average response time of 0.53 milliseconds and sustained bandwidth of 2.8GB per second. Bandwidth intensive testing achieved a sustained 5GB per second while delivering 162,292 IOPS. These test results provide critical documentation as to how the CACHEfx appliance can accelerate a wide range of applications in high performance computing environments. (Editors note: Gear6 will provide live demonstrations of its CACHEfx appliances in Booth #3143 at SC07 in Reno, NV, November 12-15.)
High performance compute clusters are indicative of a prominent data center trend: massive compute resources powering data-intensive applications relying on a shared data set. For example, computer animation studios have render farms with thousands of processors accessing a shared repository of a film’s data. This model is generally referred to as large scale shared I/O. CACHEfx appliances from Gear6 are redefining large scale shared I/O performance, eliminating crippling bottlenecks, and greatly reducing data access latency. This ensures compute nodes are no longer starved for data and also maximizes cluster utilization levels and performance. As I/O performance needs increase over time, CACHEfx appliances can be added in building block fashion, scaling linearly to support growth and protect existing investments.
“We’re seeing pent up customer demand to scale I/O performance to match spiraling compute needs,” said Nisha Talagala, CTO for Gear6. “Existing approaches are typically complex to architect, costly to implement, and often require disruptive change. Centralized storage caching eliminates these burdens by delivering caching as a high performance shared network service. Immediate performance benefits provide seamless scalability for ongoing investment protection.”
CACHEfx appliances attach to the network using standard Gigabit Ethernet or 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and support any NFS-based file system, including clustered file systems. Centralized storage caching extends the capabilities of existing compute clusters and storage systems without requiring changes to applications, file systems, or storage management software. This network centric caching approach delivers performance for existing infrastructure and provides a foundation for next generation high performance compute clusters.
About the Test Configurations
Load testing was conducted using an I/O load generator configured to drive a wide range of workloads. The throughput test simulated an IOPS- and latency-intensive workload characterized by many small-sized operations. This test consisted of 60 clients accessing data from the CACHEfx appliance with a 4KB block size. The bandwidth-intensive test modified the workload such that there were fewer larger-sized operations. This test consisted of 74 clients accessing data from the CACHEfx appliance with a 32KB block size.