Enterprise users interested in high-speed, low-latency I/O switching fabric InfiniBand, but concerned about being locked into a specific vendor because of proprietary drivers needed to deploy the technology should keep an eye on a new group that is working on making InfiniBand easier to use.
Called the OpenIB Alliance, the group launched this week with Dell, IBM, Sun and Intel heading a list of systems, storage and InfiniBand vendors and high-performance computing users that are joining forces to create an open-source software stack for deploying InfiniBand in Linux environments. The group says it will release its “software delivery schedule” in the third quarter and plans to make an open source stack available within a year, according to Allyson Klein, initiative marketing manager for the enterprise platform group at Intel.
That means all Linux-based InfiniBand deployments will ultimately use the same software drivers embedded in the Linux operating system, streamlining the task of setting up InfiniBand clusters, members of the alliance say.
Today, InfiniBand vendors roll their own software stacks, meaning that users are dealing with a hodgepodge of proprietary drivers, which can create hurdles when moving among vendor products. In addition, when Linux patches are issued, users have to make sure that InfiniBand drivers are consistent with the Linux updates.
Steve Woods, principal systems architect at MCNC Grid Computing & Networking Services in Research Triangle Park, N.C., says an open source software stack will help alleviate those problems. MCNC is a private, nonprofit corporation established to advance technology-led economic development and job creation throughout North Carolina. It is running a Red Hat Linux cluster of IBM x335s connected with a Topspin switch.
“The biggest hurdles [to InfiniBand deployments] have been ensuring consistency, such as matching the drivers, utilities, kernels, and MPI libraries that take advantage of the InfiniBand architecture. It is our hope that this alliance will address those issues,” says Woods.
“Currently, we are at the mercy of vendors for individual updates or drivers. For example, the Linux kernel and driver have to match. If we get a security patch for the Linux kernel, we have to make sure the driver will match,” he says. “We would like for everything to be built into the Linux kernel so we don’t have to go back to the vendor for updates… If all this is built into the kernel, it becomes as simple as it is today with Gigabit Ethernet.”
Matt Leininger, computer scientist and principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif., which is currently running a 128-node InfiniBand cluster, says an open software stack will help make InfiniBand more attractive to a wider group of users.
“To realize the commodity aspects of InfiniBand we need to have a single open-source InfiniBand stack that is compatible with multiple InfiniBand vendors’ hardware,” he says. “By having a single, stable, robust, multi-vendor, and high-performance software stack available, end users can select the InfiniBand hardware that is most appropriate to their computing environment.”
Analysts agree a standard driver for Linux likely will help drive competition because customers will be able to make an easier transition from one vendor to another just as they do today with Ethernet. The alliance plans to release open-source stacks for other operating systems, as well, says Intel’s Klein.
“The alliance’s announcement makes it far more likely that InfiniBand protocols such as uDAPL [User Direct Access Programming Library] will become de facto standards like TCP/IP, which is an interoperable standard” says Peter Kastner, an analyst at the Aberdeen Group.
“It will broaden the options for customers by allowing vendors to quickly get into the game. For example, big storage companies will be able to quickly go to market with iSCSI-over-InfiniBand products without having the proprietary, time consuming and risky development effort to do on their own,” he says.
Members of the alliance hope their effort will drive InfiniBand adoption, but analysts note that InfiniBand still has yet to take off as was originally expected when it was introduced as the cure for server bottlenecks in 2000. InfiniBand is making its largest inroads in high-performance technical computing, where users such as Sandia’s Leininger are opting for the open standard of InfiniBand over proprietary interconnects such as Quadrics and Myrinet.
As far as enterprise data center deployments go, however, Jeremey Donovan, research vice president at Gartner, notes that Ethernet remains the dominant interconnect. He estimates about 250 million InfiniBand ports shipped last year, compared to some 280 million Ethernet ports.
While having a standard software stack will eliminate incompatibility among vendors, Donovan doubts it will spur widespread adoption because of larger concerns about deploying completely new infrastructure to support an InfiniBand environment.
“With InfiniBand even if you get a driver you still need a lot of hardware. An InfiniBand network is a greenfield network. It requires a sequence of decisions that present bigger barriers than a driver does,” Donovan says.
