Modern parallel filesystems such as Lustre are designed to provide high, scalable I/O bandwidth in response to growing I/O requirements; however, the bursty I/O characteristics of many data-intensive scientific applications make it difficult for back-end parallel filesystems to efficiently handle I/O requests. A burst buffer system, through which data can be temporarily buffered via high-performance storage mediums, allows for gradual flushing of data to back-end filesystems. In this paper, we explore issues surrounding the development of a burst buffer system for data-intensive scientific applications. Our initial results demonstrate that utilizing a burst buffer system on top of the Lustre filesystem shows promise for dealing with the intense I/O traffic generated by application checkpointing.
@article{arxiv.1505.01765,
title = {Development of a Burst Buffer System for Data-Intensive Applications},
author = {Teng Wang and Sarp Oral and Michael Pritchard and Kevin Vasko and Weikuan Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.01765},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
International Workshop on the Lustre Ecosystem: Challenges and Opportunities, March 2015, Annapolis MD