Read/Write accelerators in a Linux system - mini R

[jmgonza6]

Hello,
I am designing a system for deployment in a small research setting. We operate on a fully Linux environment with 6 users and with simple data sets; e.g. simulation videos, still image frames, large text files (3-30GB each). We run large simulations on many different HPC systems around the US and will use this system as a central repository for the final data. Ideally I will set up globus on this system for the transfers, but I would also like the ability for scp or rsync transfers.

The system we are looking at is the TrueNAS miniR, 12x3.5" bays. When working with the sales person, they mentioned for a Linux based system, we would need read/write accelerators and these units would occupy 2 of the HDD slots. The most important aspect of the system is high capacity so I am wondering are these read/write accelerators absolutely necessary for a Linux system? I would really like to have 12 bays dedicated to storage.
Thank you for help.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Hey @jmgonza6

Globus is new to me, but there does appear to be Docker containers for it that could be launched directly on TrueNAS SCALE - that would give this software the "closest" access to the storage.

Was it iX sales that recommended the R/W accelerator drives? ZFS does use RAM for the Adaptive Replacement Cache (ARC) as a first-level read cache, and the nature of Globus replicating or copying data across a large distance would suggest that it does not use synchronous writes - so the write accelerator might not be beneficial here.

If you do require a system that needs both the read and write accelerators, the TrueNAS R20 has 12x 3.5" bays (for your storage) and 2x 2.5" bays (for the accelerators)