[MinnowBoard] multiple GbE interface lure

Todd Pisek Todd.Pisek at quantum.com
Fri Sep 5 20:29:43 UTC 2014


Greetings,

I’m a newby and I see a lot of potential for the minnowmax.

I was  reading the email archives and I noticed that there was some discussion last week regarding a multiple GbE NIC lure and use cases for such a device.

I am interested in using the minnowmax (especially the upcoming  4 core version) to construct high availability clusters from multiple unreliable nodes. In such a design, each node needs a communication path to other nodes. The mininum number of nodes that can tolerate a single node failure is 3. This means that each node needs connectivity to 2 other nodes. A dual NIC lure could allow this in a point to point configuration. Note the third NIC would be used to communicates to the consumers of the service provided by the cluster.  

An interesting solution for this use case would be to create a lure with  one GbE NIC and a 5-port GbE switch. One switch port connects to the NIC and the other 4 ports are brought out to RJ-45 magnetics.  This allows the construction of a 5 node highly resilient subsystem that can tolerate multiple failures and continue to function.

I’m not an EE, so I don’t know the feasibility of adding a 5-port switch. It’s a bit more than strictly needed, but highly desireable. However, if a switch is not possible, a dual GbE NIC lure would be needed for this use case. 

Regards,

Todd Pisek

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