@inproceedings{72da72b5d77a4722ac5b3bb4ea6bcd6f,
title = "Xen-based HPC: A parallel I/O perspective",
abstract = "Virtualization using Xen-based virtual machine environment has yet to permeate the field of high performance computing (HPC). One major requirement for HPC is the availability of scalable and high performance I/O. Conventional wisdom suggests that virtualization of system services must lead to degraded performance. In this presentation, we take on a parallel I/O perspective to study the viability of Xen-based HPC for data-intensive programs. We have analyzed the overheads and migration costs for parallel I/O programs in a Xen-based virtual machine cluster. Our analysis covers PVFS-based parallel I/O over two different networking protocols: TCP-based Gigabit Ethernet and VMM-bypass InfiniBand. Our experimental results suggest that network processing in Xen-based virtualization can significantly impact the performance of Parallel I/O. By carefully tuning the networking layers, we have demonstrated the following for Xen-based HPC I/O: (1) TCP offloading can help achieve low overhead parallel I/O; (2) parallel reads and writes require different network tuning to achieve good I/O bandwidth; and (3) Xen-based HPC environment can support high performance parallel I/O with both negligible overhead and little migration cost.",
author = "Weikuan Yu and Vetter, {Jeffrey S.}",
year = "2008",
doi = "10.1109/CCGRID.2008.119",
language = "English",
isbn = "9780769531564",
series = "Proceedings CCGRID 2008 - 8th IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid",
pages = "154--161",
booktitle = "Proceedings CCGRID 2008 - 8th IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid",
note = "CCGRID 2008 - 8th IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid ; Conference date: 19-05-2008 Through 22-05-2008",
}