Whitepapers: Lustre Storage Architecture and Networking

Check out these white papers for information on Lustre architecture, networking, high availability, and comparison with other shared/cluster file systems:

Lustre File System: High-Performance Storage Architecture and Scalable Cluster File System
Scalability is one of Lustre's most attractive attributes, offering as it does, the ability for users to deploy a Lustre file system as a general-purpose, datacenter back-end file system at a variety of sites, from Internet service providers (ISPs) to large financial institutions. Enhancements to wide area support scheduled for imminent release in Lustre networking (LNET) and storage software, should make these market segments even more important.

Lustre Networking White Paper
This paper provides information about Lustre networking that can be used to plan cluster file system deployments for optimal performance and scalability. The paper includes information on Lustre message passing, Lustre Network Drivers,and routing in Lustre networks, and describes how these features can be used to improve cluster storage management. The final section of this paper describes new Lustre networking features that are currently under consideration or planned for future release.

HPC and Virtualization: Not What You Might Expect

Josh Simons has an excellent writeup on HPC and Virtualization on his blog:

"HPC codes are generally compute intensive so one would expect such straight-line code to execute at full speed in a virtualized environment. These tests also confirm, however, that aspects of memory performance are essentially unaffected by virtualization as well. These results are a tribute primarily to the maturity of virtualization support included in current processor architectures. Full Story