• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Infiniband the best option?

T

Therealmaster967

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 15, 2010
Messages
107
I'm wondering if Infiniband is the best option for an interconnect between two machines running Vista, needing faster than 1GbE connectivity for RAID Array access, or what would be the best way to link the two systems.

Thanks!
 
fibre channel is much more common in my experience... full duplex FC HBAs are up into the 4Gbps range now at least... been a while since I worked on SANs though...
 
Use Fiber.

Infiniband is not all that great on windows. It uses TCPIP in windows so its not all that much better than GigE
 
DeChache said:
Use Fiber.

Infiniband is not all that great on windows. It uses TCPIP in windows so its not all that much better than GigE
Click to expand...
Fibre runs at the same speeds as Ethernet. However OP, FC and IB are (a) expensive and (b) need special hardware (switches, NICs, etc.)

2-4 bonded Gigabit links are a much cheaper solution.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
djBon2112 said:
Fibre runs at the same speeds as Ethernet. However OP, FC and IB are (a) expensive and (b) need special hardware (switches, NICs, etc.)

2-4 bonded Gigabit links are a much cheaper solution.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
Click to expand...

Looking for Point to Point link speed though, for single operations, Would bonded Gigabit links work just as well?
 
Therealmaster967 said:
Looking for Point to Point link speed though, for single operations, Would bonded Gigabit links work just as well?
Click to expand...

Only if you have a one to many or many to many relationship.

So if you have only one computer transferring data to one host across an etherchannel, you will only get once channel's worth of bandwidth due to the way sessions are split (mac/ip hash). If you have many computers accessing one host, then you can start to benefit from etherchannel, and if you have many to many the load balancing should be pretty darn good.

If you need bandwidth between two (or very few) hosts, go with 4/8Gb fiber or 10Gb ethernet.
 
10 gig ethernet is probably a better choice in most cases than infiniband. Have you tried with just gigabit links and found that you're saturating them?
 
archivalbackup said:
Only if you have a one to many or many to many relationship.

So if you have only one computer transferring data to one host across an etherchannel, you will only get once channel's worth of bandwidth due to the way sessions are split (mac/ip hash). If you have many computers accessing one host, then you can start to benefit from etherchannel, and if you have many to many the load balancing should be pretty darn good.

If you need bandwidth between two (or very few) hosts, go with 4/8Gb fiber or 10Gb ethernet.
Click to expand...

I'm confused about your post... first, what is "etherchannel" as I've never heard of it. Second, if he's just connecting two computers, bonded links will help, but they have to all be point-to-point between the computers (so with 4 links between the computers, each would need 5 NICs total, for external connectivity).
 
djBon2112 said:
I'm confused about your post... first, what is "etherchannel" as I've never heard of it. Second, if he's just connecting two computers, bonded links will help, but they have to all be point-to-point between the computers (so with 4 links between the computers, each would need 5 NICs total, for external connectivity).
Click to expand...

You, sir, have some reading to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherChannel

Since we are talking about windows, there is no native bonding within windows (before Server 2008). Linux would be a different story.

Also I would be interested to know what his actual performance is on his RAID array. If we are talking about less than 160MB/s gigabit is fine.
 
archivalbackup said:
You, sir, have some reading to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherChannel

Since we are talking about windows, there is no native bonding within windows (before Server 2008). Linux would be a different story.

Also I would be interested to know what his actual performance is on his RAID array. If we are talking about less than 160MB/s gigabit is fine.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, I'm not half-way through my first Cisco course yet so I haven't heard of EtherChannel yet.

I know there isn't native bonding in Windows, but are there not still ways to do it, which will end up being cheaper than FC/IB?
 
Okay I'll bite, what are you doing that warrants a discussion about infiniband? Generally if you are into the high end stuff, you'll already know what the answer is.
 
HoppyChris said:
10 gig ethernet is probably a better choice in most cases than infiniband. Have you tried with just gigabit links and found that you're saturating them?
Click to expand...

Yes, Saturating straight gigabit links, even with jumbo frames, and all the other tricks.

How much different are such things as Infiniband, fibre channel, and 10GbE compared to standard 1GbE, on the software side?
 
archivalbackup said:
You, sir, have some reading to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherChannel

Since we are talking about windows, there is no native bonding within windows (before Server 2008). Linux would be a different story.

Also I would be interested to know what his actual performance is on his RAID array. If we are talking about less than 160MB/s gigabit is fine.
Click to expand...

Much closer to 300-350MB/s between arrays of SAS drives.
 
Keiichi said:
Okay I'll bite, what are you doing that warrants a discussion about infiniband? Generally if you are into the high end stuff, you'll already know what the answer is.
Click to expand...

Problem is, I'm "into" that high end stuff, but only just barely. I dont have any 'formal' training on it. Just being pushed into it, because "standard and easy" 1GbE has become to slow of an interface for the applications used, so trying to figure out this big step up in bandwidth, and learning, with the limited sources of information that I can find on the internet currently. Either I'm putting in the wrong search terms and such, or this technology is just still that rare that well, as you have said before, those who need to know, already know what the answer is.

"Standard Ethernet" I've sure got my head wrapped around, but these other technologies I'm still learning as much as I can.
 
Therealmaster967 said:
Problem is, I'm "into" that high end stuff, but only just barely. I dont have any 'formal' training on it. Just being pushed into it, because "standard and easy" 1GbE has become to slow of an interface for the applications used, so trying to figure out this big step up in bandwidth, and learning, with the limited sources of information that I can find on the internet currently. Either I'm putting in the wrong search terms and such, or this technology is just still that rare that well, as you have said before, those who need to know, already know what the answer is.
Click to expand...

What is your particular application? Are you xferring huge files back and forth? Or do you just need access to really big files in a timely matter? Are you doing video editing? A fiber setup is probably your best answer. There are 4Gb and even 8Gb HBAs, which both should be able to handle your sustained transfer requirements.

Really though you should consider your setup. For lack of a better term you need to invest in an Xsan type of environment where the storage is on a dedicated device and not on the workstations themselves.
 
Keiichi said:
What is your particular application? Are you xferring huge files back and forth? Or do you just need access to really big files in a timely matter? Are you doing video editing? A fiber setup is probably your best answer. There are 4Gb and even 8Gb HBAs, which both should be able to handle your sustained transfer requirements.

Really though you should consider your setup. For lack of a better term you need to invest in an Xsan type of environment where the storage is on a dedicated device and not on the workstations themselves.
Click to expand...

Mostly large file transfers (every day), but also video editing across the link.
Thanks, I'll look into the Fibre end more deeply now, and see what I can pull up.

I suppose I'm just not quite at the limit where I am looking into a dedicated storage device. Its more like these two workstations serve up the data for the rest of the network as well, and provide access to the storage, and at gigabit speeds, the other users are fine, but between the two of them I'm constantly waiting on the gigabit line to complete transfers and file modifications to complete, when the local storage has completely saturated the ethernet line.
 
Yeah from the sounds of it you do need to look heavily into a Clustered file system with dedicated storage (Avid's Unity, Apple's Xsan, StorNEXT etc.) With the appropriate gear will improve productivity reduce bottlenecks, blah blah blah... The longer you wait, the more expensive it will be when you finally do switch over.
 
Thanks. Once this last upgrade is complete (fibre connectivity possibility) the next step will be toward such a dedicated storage system. Currently there is only a demand to up the bandwidth between the two workstations though, after a RAID upgrade recently occurred, with limited growth in the next three to four years, after upgrading of the current connectivity.
 
4Gb fiber channel gear can be had fairly cheaply on the used market if you shop around a bit.

Bonded GigE won't help you with single file, point to point throughput. There might be a way to rig iSCSI with multipathing over a couple GigE NICs for improved performance, but that's far out of my league.
 
realmaster- You can see 200+MB/s performance on IP over IB with a couple of cheap HCAs and a cable. A pair of used cards and a new cable would go for around $150 or so, slightly higher for a pair of new cards and a new cable. So if someone wanted to test it out in their application, you're not looking at the much higher investment 10GBE is. The issue with IP over IB is things like broadcast traffic and DHCP doesn't work without setting it up specifically (there is a seperate DHCP over IB spec). A pair of used 10Gbase-CX4 cards can be had for around $125 a card if you scour ebay for long enough and wait it out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top