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

Fri Mar 2 16:33:46 GMT 2018

Hi Leandro,

I think the silence in response to your question says a lot, don’t you?  :-O

IBM has said (on this list, I believe) that the Meltdown / Spectre patches do not impact GPFS functionality.  They’ve been silent as to performance impacts, which can and will be taken various ways.

In the absence of information from IBM, the approach we have chosen to take is to patch everything except our GPFS servers … only we (the SysAdmins, oh, and the NSA, of course!) can log in to them, so we feel that the risk of not patching them is minimal.

HTHAL…

Kevin

On Mar 1, 2018, at 9:02 AM, Avila-Diaz, Leandro <lavila at illinois.edu<mailto:lavila at illinois.edu>> wrote:

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<mailto:gpfsug-discuss-bounces at spectrumscale.org>> on behalf of IBM Spectrum Scale <scale at us.ibm.com<mailto:scale at us.ibm.com>>
Reply-To: gpfsug main discussion list <gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org<mailto:gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org>>
Date: Thursday, January 4, 2018 at 20:36
To: gpfsug main discussion list <gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org<mailto: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

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<image001.gif>"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<mailto:Kevin.Buterbaugh at Vanderbilt.Edu>>
To: gpfsug main discussion list <gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto:Kevin.Buterbaugh at vanderbilt.edu> - (615)875-9633

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

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