Optimized I/O for storage MD1000: choices RAID50? XFS/JFS/ext3? with LVM

[Brice Figureau]

On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 17:41 +0200, Philippe SENOT wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm newbie to install a cluster.
> We have 
> 1x PE2950 with PERC5/e
> 5x PE1950
> 1x MD1000 with 10 disks 300Go
> System: Linux ROCKS 4.3, INTEL compilers
> 
> We need the best I/O (speed/secure/reliable) for access large files of
> datas (at same time 6 files each of 20Go)  for calculations.
> 
> I plane to use LVM to have the possibility to add 5 disks in the
> MD1000 and then to extend this filesystem mounted  as  /home2 for one
> user. 
> Can you help me to choose the best filesystem and RAID solutions.

You should describe your load pattern: 
 * is it more reads or writes, or a combination
 * how many readers/writers

You should also describe how you plan to access the files on the MD1000
from the other servers of your cluster: NFS from PE1950 to the PE2950,
or something else?

Naively from what you gave us, I'd go with a tuned (ie not the defaults
options) XFS on top of LVM. If you have more writes than reads, RAID10
should be better.

HTH,
-- 
Brice Figureau <brice+dell at daysofwonder.com>