[gpfsug-discuss] GPFS best practises : end user standpoint

Jonathan Buzzard jonathan.buzzard at strath.ac.uk
Wed Jan 17 17:31:39 GMT 2018


On Wed, 2018-01-17 at 16:56 +0000, Buterbaugh, Kevin L wrote:
> Inline…
> 
>> Kevin Buterbaugh - Senior System Administrator
> Vanderbilt University - Advanced Computing Center for Research and
> Education
> Kevin.Buterbaugh at vanderbilt.edu - (615)875-9633
> 
> > On Jan 16, 2018, at 11:25 AM, Jonathan Buzzard <jonathan.buzzard at st
> > rath.ac.uk> wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, 2018-01-16 at 16:35 +0000, Buterbaugh, Kevin L wrote:
> > 
> > [SNIP]
> > 
> > I am quite sure someone storing 1PB has to pay more than someone
> > storing 1TB, so why should someone storing 20 million files not
> > have to pay more than someone storing 100k files? 
> > 
>  
> Because they won’t … they’ll do something more brain dead like put a
> WD MyBook they bought at Costco on their desk and expect their job to
> copy data back and forth from it to /tmp on the compute node.  We
> have to offer a service that users are willing to pay for … we can’t
> dictate to them the way things WILL be.

However users need to be willing to pay for something that works. As
they say cheap, fast and resilient pick any two.

Getting back to your scenario, their performance will suck assuming it
would work in the first place and secondly it's not your problem any
more :-)

> There’s a big difference between the way things should be and the way
> things actually are … trust me, those of us in the United States know
> that better than most people around the world after the past year!
>  Bigly!  Buh-leave ME!  :-O
> 

In my experience part of the problem is system administrators *not*
pushing back a bit to users when they want something unreasonable. If
you don't all you do is raise a generation of spoilt children.

Secondly in my experience when you do push back most users are
reasonable and understanding when it's explained to them in a manner
they understand that what they are trying to do is not sensible.

Oh and for the record I have been right their and had to put a file
quota on a user that effectively stopped them dead in their tracks
because half the files on the file system where from that one user, and
everyone else was complaining that performance was going down the tube.

I relevant example is a research group in my university where too cheap
to by a proper file server so brought a large NAS box instead from a
well known vendor. Just before Christmas the NAS box popped, it's still
not replaced yet. Said research group have put their hands in their
pockets for a server from a tier one vendor with a 4hr response
maintenance plan. Funny that :-)

JAB.

-- 
Jonathan A. Buzzard                         Tel: +44141-5483420
HPC System Administrator, ARCHIE-WeSt.
University of Strathclyde, John Anderson Building, Glasgow. G4 0NG




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