White Papers

Dell Storage for HPC with Intel Enterprise Edition 2.3 for Lustre sofware
(IML) GUI interface provides an option to configure either a single or multiple Lustre Network
Identifiers (NID) on MDS and OSS servers to participate in the Lustre Network. For instance, you could
configure your Infiniband interface (i.e. ib0) as well as your 10GbE Ethernet interface (i.e. eth0) on
your OSS servers to both participate in the Lustre Network.
In the InfiniBand network, fast transfer speeds with low latency can be achieved. LNet leverages the
use of RDMA for rapid data and metadata transfer to and from MDTs and OSTs to the clients. The OSS
and MDS servers take advantage of the FDR InfiniBand fabric with single port Mellanox ConnectX-3 56
Gb adapters. The FDR InfiniBand HBAs can be integrated to existing QDR or DDR networks if needed.
3.6 Managing the Dell Storage for HPC with Intel EE for Lustre
The Intel Manager for Lustre (IML) takes the complexity out of administering a Lustre file system by
providing a centralized web GUI for management purposes. For example, IML can be used as a tool to
standardize the following actions: initiating failover of the file system from one node to another (for
either OSS or MDS), formatting the file system, issue mount and unmounts of the targets and
monitoring performance of the Lustre file system and the status of its components. Figure 10 illustrates
a few of the IML monitoring interfaces.
IML is a web-based management console to manage the solution (assuming all security requirements
are met). It provides a view of the hardware, software and file system components, while allowing
monitoring and management.
Using IML, many tasks that once required complex CLI instructions can now be completed easily with a
few mouse clicks. IML can be used to shut down a file system, initiate a failover from one MDS to
another, monitor, and so forth.
Figure 10: Intel Manager for Lustre (IML) interface