Mellanox Technologies has introduced Linux NFS-RDMA (network file system over remote direct memory access) support for its Infiniband adapters. The company claims its NFS-RDMA support delivers Infiniband read and write throughputs of 1.3GB/sec and 600MB/sec, respectively, over a single InfiniBand link, “a ten-fold improvement over existing NFS over Gigabit Ethernet.”

InfiniBand is a high-speed I/O… bus aimed at servers, communications infrastructure equipment, storage, and embedded systems applications. The InfiniBand Trade Association characterizes the standard as “a true fabric architecture that leverages switched, point-to-point channels with data transfers up to 120 gigabits per second, both in chassis backplane applications as well as through external copper and optical fiber connections.”

Mellanox says its open-source Linux NVS-RDMA implementation is compatible with the OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) version 1.2, a validated version of the open-source OpenFabrics software stack. Mellanox's NVS-RDMA stack is optimized for its MTD2000 Storage Platform, and provides the “software infrastructure and device driver support for Mellanox InfiniBand devices,” the company said in a statement.

Mellanox's MTD2000 storage platform

InfiniHost III adapter (Click to enlarge)

The company claims its NVS-RDMA stack to have demonstrated “unprecedented network file system performance” in its internal benchmarks. The test setup is described as follows:

“Using the Mellanox MTD2000 storage platform reference design (based on Intel CPUs, Mellanox InfiniHost III adapters, OFED 1.2, RHEL5 or SLES 10 SP1) as an NFS-RDMA server, and up to four NFS-RDMA clients, read performance of 1.3GB/s has been achieved for file sizes ranging from 64 to 1024 megabytes, and write performance of 550 to 590MB/s for file sizes ranging from 64 to 512 megabytes (using the IOzone file system benchmark). Also, read and write throughput is maintained for all record sizes ranging from 4 kilobytes to 512 kilobytes.”

Mellanox's Linux NFS-RDMA stack is released in the form of a free, open-source software development kit (SDK), available for download on its website here. The stack is derived from the SourceForge NFS-RDMA project code base, which is released under a BSD-style license.

Mellanox says it is demonstrating its Linux NFS-RDMA stack this week at LinuxWorld in San Francisco.

 
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