[gpfsug-discuss] Meltdown, Spectre, and impacts on GPFS

Fri Mar 2 05:15:21 GMT 2018

Hi,

The verification/test work is still ongoing. Hopefully GPFS will publish
statement soon. I think it would be available through several channels,
such as FAQ.

Regards, The Spectrum Scale (GPFS) team

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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(GPFS), then please post it to the public IBM developerWroks Forum at
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If your query concerns a potential software error in Spectrum Scale (GPFS)
and you have an IBM software maintenance contract please contact
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for priority messages to the Spectrum Scale (GPFS) team.

From:	"Avila-Diaz, Leandro" <lavila at illinois.edu>
To:	gpfsug main discussion list <gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org>
Date:	03/01/2018 11:17 PM
Subject:	Re: [gpfsug-discuss] Meltdown, Spectre, and impacts on GPFS
Sent by:	gpfsug-discuss-bounces at spectrumscale.org

Good morning,

Does anyone know if IBM has an official statement and/or perhaps a FAQ
document about the Spectre/Meltdown impact on GPFS?
Thank you

From: <gpfsug-discuss-bounces at spectrumscale.org> on behalf of IBM Spectrum
Scale <scale at us.ibm.com>
Reply-To: gpfsug main discussion list <gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org>
Date: Thursday, January 4, 2018 at 20:36
To: gpfsug main discussion list <gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org>
Subject: Re: [gpfsug-discuss] Meltdown, Spectre, and impacts on GPFS

Kevin,

The team is aware of Meltdown and Spectre. Due to the late availability of
production-ready test patches (they became available today) we started
today working on evaluating the impact of applying these patches. The focus
would be both on any potential functional impacts (especially to the kernel
modules shipped with GPFS) and on the performance degradation which affects
user/kernel mode transitions. Performance characterization will be complex,
as some system calls which may get invoked often by the mmfsd daemon will
suddenly become significantly more expensive because of the kernel changes.
Depending on the main areas affected, code changes might be possible to
alleviate the impact, by reducing frequency of certain calls, etc. Any such
changes will be deployed over time.

At this point, we can't say what impact this will have on stability or
Performance on systems running GPFS — until IBM issues an official
statement on this topic. We hope to have some basic answers soon.

Regards, The Spectrum Scale (GPFS) team

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you feel that your question can benefit other users of Spectrum Scale
(GPFS), then please post it to the public IBM developerWroks Forum at
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/forum?id=11111111-0000-0000-0000-000000000479
.

If your query concerns a potential software error in Spectrum Scale (GPFS)
and you have an IBM software maintenance contract please contact
1-800-237-5511 in the United States or your local IBM Service Center in
other countries.

The forum is informally monitored as time permits and should not be used
for priority messages to the Spectrum Scale (GPFS) team.

Inactive hide details for "Buterbaugh, Kevin L" ---01/04/2018 01:11:59
PM---Happy New Year everyone, I’m sure that everyone is"Buterbaugh, Kevin
L" ---01/04/2018 01:11:59 PM---Happy New Year everyone, I’m sure that
everyone is aware of Meltdown and Spectre by now … we, like m

From: "Buterbaugh, Kevin L" <Kevin.Buterbaugh at Vanderbilt.Edu>
To: gpfsug main discussion list <gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org>
Date: 01/04/2018 01:11 PM
Subject: [gpfsug-discuss] Meltdown, Spectre, and impacts on GPFS
Sent by: gpfsug-discuss-bounces at spectrumscale.org

Happy New Year everyone,

I’m sure that everyone is aware of Meltdown and Spectre by now … we, like
many other institutions, will be patching for it at the earliest possible
opportunity.

Our understanding is that the most serious of the negative performance
impacts of these patches will be for things like I/O (disk / network) …
given that, we are curious if IBM has any plans for a GPFS update that
could help mitigate those impacts? Or is there simply nothing that can be
done?

If there is a GPFS update planned for this we’d be interested in knowing so
that we could coordinate the kernel and GPFS upgrades on our cluster.

Thanks…

Kevin

P.S. The “Happy New Year” wasn’t intended as sarcasm … I hope it is a good
year for everyone despite how it’s starting out. :-O

—
Kevin Buterbaugh - Senior System Administrator
Vanderbilt University - Advanced Computing Center for Research and
Education
Kevin.Buterbaugh at vanderbilt.edu - (615)875-9633

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