[Bioclusters] Nomenclature (was Re: Call for information.)

[Ivo Grosse]

Hi Octavio,

thanks a lot for your detailed email.  One line triggered a question 
that I would like to ask to the whole list:

Octavio Martinez de la Vega <omartine@ira.cinvestav.mx> wrote on Thu, 
18 Apr 2002:

> The cluster is interconnected with a 1Gb switch.

We are currently thinking of getting a new fileserver for our 40-nodes 
cluster, and we are thinking of connecting it to the cluster through a 
Gigabit NIC.  (The cluster switch already has a gigabit uplink.)

Now someone mentioned to us that the physical speed of SCSI disks is of 
the order of 100 Mbits/s.  If that is true, then of course a Gigabit 
connection to the fileserver makes no sense, because the bottleneck 
will be the r/w speed of the disks, and not the network.

Can anyone of you comment on this?  Would a Gigabit connection to a 
fileserver make any sense?

Best regards,

Ivo