Performance Enhancement of SMP Clusters with
Multiple Network Interfaces Using Virtualization
Peter Strazdins, Richard Alexander, and David Barr.
Performance Enhancement of SMP Clusters with
Multiple Network Interfaces Using Virtualization,
in G. Min, B. Di Martino, L.T. Yang, M. Guo and G. Runger (Eds),
Frontier on High Performance Computing and Networking,
LNCS 4331, Springer-Verlag, pp. 452--463, 2006.
(presented at XHPC'06: Workshop on XEN in High-Performance Cluster and
Grid Computing, held in conjunction with ISPA'06: The International
Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing and Application 2006,
Sorrento, 04 Dec 2006)
Contents
- slides (13 pages, 0.3M)
- paper (12 pages, 96K)
note errata: Table 2: the
entries `530' and `30' should be transposed
Abstract
lusters of small-scale SMP/CMP nodes are becoming increasingly popular
due to their cost-effectiveness. As these nodes are typically capable of
supporting a number of network interfaces similar to the number of CPUs,
the issue arises how to optimally configure the cluster for optimum
communication performance. This paper evaluates a number of
configurations on a 4-CPU Opteron cluster with multiple Gigabit Ethernet
interfaces. Techniques include channel bonding and using independent
communication pathways. With the latter, the use of virtualization via
the Xen Virtual Machine Monitor offers the best potential to parallelize
all stages of message transmission, for the case when multiple CPUs on a
node are communicating simultaneously. Network-level microbenchmarks
indicate the best performance is achieved with a configuration where
guest virtual machines running on each CPU communicate directly with a
dedicated interface, bypassing the virtual machine monitor.
Channel bonding also proved to be more effective over multiple
communication streams than over single.