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BeeGFS on NetApp with E-Series Storage

Sizing guidelines

Contributors netapp-jsnyder netapp-jolieg mcwhiteside codyharryman iamjoemccormick

The BeeGFS solution includes recommendations for performance and capacity sizing that were based on verification tests.

The objective with a building-block architecture is to create a solution that is simple to size by adding multiple building blocks to meet the requirements for a particular BeeGFS system. Using the guidelines below, you can estimate the quantity and types of BeeGFS building blocks that are needed to meet the requirements of your environment.

Keep in mind that these estimates are best-case performance. Synthetic benchmarking applications are written and utilized to optimize the use of underlying file systems in ways that real-world applications might not.

Performance sizing

The following table provides recommended performance sizing.

Configuration profile 1MiB reads 1MiB writes

Metadata + storage

62GiBps

21GiBps

Storage only

64GiBps

21GiBps

Metadata capacity sizing estimates are based on the "rule of thumb" that 500GB of capacity is sufficient for roughly 150 million files in BeeGFS. (For more information, see the BeeGFS documentation for System Requirements.)

The use of features like access control lists and the number of directories and files per directory also affect how quickly metadata space is consumed. Storage capacity estimates do account for usable drive capacity along with RAID 6 and XFS overhead.

Capacity sizing for metadata + storage building blocks

The following table provides recommended capacity sizing for metadata plus storage building blocks.

Drive size (2+2 RAID 1) metadata volume groups Metadata capacity (number of files) Drive size (8+2 RAID 6) storage volume groups Storage capacity (file content)

1.92TB

1,938,577,200

1.92TB

51.77TB

3.84TB

3,880,388,400

3.84TB

103.55TB

7.68TB

8,125,278,000

7.68TB

216.74TB

15.3TB

17,269,854,000

15.3TB

460.60TB

Note When sizing metadata plus storage building blocks, you can reduce costs by using smaller drives for metadata volume groups versus storage volume groups.

Capacity sizing for storage-only building blocks

The following table provides rule-of-thumb capacity sizing for storage-only building blocks.

Drive size (10+2 RAID 6) storage volume groups Storage capacity (file content)

1.92TB

59.89TB

3.84TB

119.80TB

7.68TB

251.89TB

15.3TB

538.55TB

Note The performance and capacity overhead of including the management service in the base (first) building block are minimal, unless global file locking is enabled.