Establishing applicability of SSDs to LHC Tier-2 hardware configuration

Skipsey, S. C. , Bhimji, W. and Kenyon, M. (2011) Establishing applicability of SSDs to LHC Tier-2 hardware configuration. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 331(5), 052019. (doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/331/5/052019)

Abstract

Solid State Disk technologies are increasingly replacing high-speed hard disks as the storage technology in high-random-I/O environments. There are several potentially I/O bound services within the typical LHC Tier-2 - in the back-end, with the trend towards many-core architectures continuing, worker nodes running many single-threaded jobs and storage nodes delivering many simultaneous files can both exhibit I/O limited efficiency. We estimate the effectiveness of affordable SSDs in the context of worker nodes, on a large Tier-2 production setup using both low level tools and real LHC I/O intensive data analysis jobs comparing and contrasting with high performance spinning disk based solutions. We consider the applicability of each solution in the context of its price/performance metrics, with an eye on the pragmatic issues facing Tier-2 provision and upgrades.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Skipsey, Dr Samuel and Kenyon, Dr Michael
• Authors: Skipsey, S. C., Bhimji, W., and Kenyon, M.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
• Journal Name: Journal of Physics: Conference Series
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• ISSN: 1742-6588
• ISSN (Online): 1742-6596
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2011 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series 331(5):052019
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher