The InTENsity PowerWall: A Case Study for a Shared File System Testing Framework.
Alex W. Elder, Thomas M. Ruwart, Benjamin D. Allen, Angela Bartow, Sarah E. Anderson, David H. Porter · 2000
The InTENsity PowerWall is a display system used for high-resolution visualization of very large volumetric data sets. The display is linked to two separate computing environments consisting of more than a dozen computer systems. Linking these systems is a common shared storage subsystem that allows a great deal of flexibility in the way visualization data can be generated and displayed. These visualization applications demand very high bandwidth performance from the storage subsystem and associated file system. The InTENsity PowerWall system presents a real-world application environment in which to apply a distributed performance testing framework under development at the Laboratory for Computational Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. This testing framework allows us to perform focused, coordinated performance testing of the hardware and software components of storage area networks and shared file systems.[2] We use this framework to evaluate various performance characteristics of the PowerWall system’s storage area network. We describe our testing approach and some of the results of our testing, and conclude by describing the direction of our future work in this area.