Re:The logging framework isn't a bottleneck, and other lies ...
by simcop2387 on Thursday May 14, 2020 @01:03AM
(#23175514)
The hotswap is unfortunate, and likely a resukt of server/consumer space differentiation among all kinds of vendors (os, cpu, motherboar, and even the nvme manufacturers all have to play along). But the limit of 4 is at least a real technical limitation, each one of those addin cards usess a pcie 16x slot (either real or "dimm.2" ) and each card needs A 4x from it. You could use a mux to add more but they're already getting to the point of being able to saturate the links. Pcie 4.0 and 5.0 will give a lot of headroom for more drives on a system.
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Re:The logging framework isn't a bottleneck, and other lies ...
by derefr on Thursday May 14, 2020 @03:06AM
(#23176353)
Sounds like we might need to go back to the kind of mainframe architecture that has IO offload. Split the PCIe bus into NUMA-like zones; give each zone its own (probably ARM) CPU, running its own kernel; then use "application processors" (probably x86) to command-and-control the IO zones, allocating e.g. IOMMU-subvirtualized ethernet channels to them. Control plane/data plane separation.
Re:The logging framework isn't a bottleneck, and other lies ...
by magicalhippo on Thursday May 14, 2020 @09:04AM
(#23178966)
There's some (to me) interesting work in this area. See for example this talk[1], where they show how a RISC-V CPU with a narrow and slow PCIe link can orchestrate the direct transfer of data between two PCIe devices (say NVME and Ethernet card), saturating the x16 link between them.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDOlqgUZtHE (Accelerating Computational Storage Over NVMe with RISC V)
Re:The logging framework isn't a bottleneck, and other lies ...
by pg-gadfly on Thursday May 14, 2020 @05:04AM
(#23177213)
A bunch of less powerful servers with expansion cards over a network should be much easier to manage and horizontally scalable
Re:The logging framework isn't a bottleneck, and other lies ...
by simcop2387 on Friday May 15, 2020 @01:50PM
(#23195074)
sort of, the network part of that ends up being a huge bottleneck then too, with 16 drives at 5GB/s (max i've seen so far) each you've got 80GB/s you need for the network to each server. You start getting into the really expensive side of things speed wise.
Re:The logging framework isn't a bottleneck, and other lies ...
by extrapickles on Thursday May 14, 2020 @05:05AM
(#23177223)
Also, most CPUs you can buy have around 40-64 PCIe lanes, limiting you to 10-16 drives if you want full speed out of them (this also leaves you with no lanes for ethernet).