[gpfsug-discuss] Disabling individual Storage Pools by themselves? How about GPFS Native Raid?

[Zachary Giles]

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.
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. 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.. :)

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) <S.J.Thompson at bham.ac.uk> 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: gpfsug-discuss-bounces at gpfsug.org [gpfsug-discuss-bounces at gpfsug.org] on behalf of Marc A Kaplan [makaplan at us.ibm.com]
> 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
zgiles at gmail.com