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@AlTobey Open Source Mechanic @ Datastax

Designing Commodity Storage

1

What is commodity storage?•software-defined storage •e.g. Cassandra, S3, GCE Persistent Disks • Intel/AMD x86_64 architecture !

Open Standards: •PCI-Express •Near-line SAS, Enterprise SATA, SATA SSD •1g/10g ethernet

Definitely NOT this

Designed to solve different problems from a different era.

Not this either

Besides SSDs most “desktop” gear is to be avoided for production deployment.

Enterprise

Rack & Stack•Blades & 1U for high CPU with low storage density •2U for plenty of CPU & storage & air flow •3U-4U for high-latency / high-density storage •“racks” don’t have to be literal •blade chassis •separate network/power is key

Vendors

Choosing Server Components•CPU •Memory •Motherboards •Host Bus Adapters •Hard Drives •Network Interface Cards

CPU Pricing

E5-2620

E5-2630

E5-2650

E5-2670

E5-2687W

E5-2690

0 550 1100 1650 2200

6 cores 2.6Ghz 80w6 cores 2.1Ghz 80w

8 cores 2.6Ghz 95w10 cores 2.5Ghz 115w (3.3Ghz turbo)8 cores 3.4Ghz 150w8 cores 2.9Ghz 135w (3.8Ghz turbo)

Dollars

15MB L3 Cache15MB20MB20MB25MB25MB

Processors

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge-E

Memory•always get ECC! •~5 single bit errors in 8 GB RAM per hour (top-end error rate) •unexplainable crashes •data corruption •8GB DIMMs are still the sweet spot !

•Registered Memory: match to your CPU/motherboard •Pretty much all server memory is ECC and Registered !

•Speed: match to fastest rating of CPU/motherboard

Motherboards•Largely out of your control •Dell / HP / etc. you’re looking at server model, e.g. DL380 •Supermicro: be very careful when picking your VAR •Features to watch for: •Socket count (NUMA) • IPMI •onboard SAS or SATA port speed/count •PCIe speed & layout •RAM capacity

Storage Adapters•Serial Attached SCSI •Bit Error Rate: 1 in 10^16 bits or 1bit in 1,250TiB •Supports SATA drives over STP •Near-line SAS drives are SATA chassis with SAS boards •Always use SAS if you need an expander •Check out enclosure services in Linux •Serial ATA •Bit Error Rate: 1 in 10^15 or 1 bit in 125 TiB •Avoid expanders

Storage Adapters•JBOD •cheap •OS manages drives •drivers usually shipped with OS •CPU overhead is negligible •HW RAID is sometimes faster, usually comes with cache •writethrough v.s. writeback •writeback + BBU provides interesting performance options •driver + utilities management

Parity RAID

RAID•JBOD •mount every drive with individual filesystems •cheap •RAID0 •single drive failure means node rebuild •cheap •RAID10 • fast, protects against single disk failure •expensive

RAID•RAID 5 / 6 (and beyond) •parity data protection •performance heavily dependent on implementation •cheapest option for drive failure protection •RAID 50 / 60 •stripe across multiple RAID[56] volumes •mostly useful with large number of drives •can provide decent performance esp. on HW RAID

Hard Drives•SATA HDD • there’s only one head carriage •seeks kill •decent performance on sequential IO •bit errors •cheap!

Hard Drives•SAS HDD • there’s only one head carriage •seeks kill •bit errors •expensive! • faster RPMs may help a little with seek latency

Hard Drives•SATA SSD •very low latency seeks •slightly lower sequential IO throughput •more expensive than SATA HDD •vendors might not want to sell them to you! •sometimes called “value series” or similar •Cassandra runs fine on consumer-grade SSDs •make sure your SATA/SAS bus and HBA are up to the task

Hard Drives•Enterprise SSD •quite expensive •vendor supported •more reliable •often faster as well

Hard Drives•PCIe SSD •e.g. FusionIO, ioSwitch •highest performance potential •not as expensive as you think • lots of new products entering the market •generally not hot-swappable

Networking•you don’t need 10gig •but it’s awesome •Broadcom cards are common and commonly buggy • Intel cards are expensive but a good bet •Consider lesser-known add-in cards, e.g. Myricom

To the Cloud!•Amazon, Google, etc. all use similar gear under the VM •same constraints apply, but you only get a fraction of the box •pass-through PCIe devices for the best performance •Avoid EBS in EC2, go with ephemerals •GCE PD’s may need additional read/write threads

@AlTobey

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Open Source Mechanic, Datastax