Re: [HTCondor-users] HTCondor file-transfer vs networked storage

[Matthew T West <M.T.West@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Good evening Nick,

I am readily aware of the value of HTCondor's file-transfer mechanism 
and associated sandboxing. But that wasn't my issue.

My question was:

When working on a single homogeneous compute cluster, are there any advantages to using HTCondor's file-transfer rather than working off shared network storage?

So not a grid or distributed campus pool or pulling from remote storage, 
but a single homogeneous compute cluster in one location that includes a 
networked file-system. I do apologize if everything after the question 
in my original email confused matters. Here might be a better way to put it:

Under what conditions does a shared file-server's degrade such that it would be better to work from local scratch, performance and throughput wise?


Regards,
Matt

On 22/08/2022 20:37, Nick LeRoy wrote:
> CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organisation. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe.
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>
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 8:44 AM Matthew T West via HTCondor-users
> <htcondor-users@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > When working on a single homogeneous compute cluster, are there any advantages to using HTCondor's file-transfer rather than working off shared network storage? I guess it would depend on the network and storage speeds.
> >
> > It's just interesting that the "always work in local scratch" mindset I am used to is seen a serious backward step performance wise:
> >
> > Scratch therefore only useful if your network storage or interconnects are slow or saturated ... copying bulk data to local storage / getting all users to copy to local/scratch storage is a quick way to saturate your storage infrastructure.
> >
> > I can find other instances of this HPC conventional wisdom and it intuitively makes sense. But I don't understand networked storage well, so I am asking the HTCondor hivemind for their thoughts.
> Matt,
>
> You need to remember that HTCondor can work in many different
> environments, among these being WANs, campus-type structures, and
> grids.  For these types of scenarios, file transfer is preferable, if
> not required.
>
> -Nick
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--
Matthew T. West
DevOps & HPC SysAdmin
University of Exeter, Research IT
www.exeter.ac.uk/research/researchcomputing/support/researchit
57 Laver Building, North Park Road, Exeter, EX4 4QE, United Kingdom

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