Checkpointing Strategies for Shared High-Performance Computing Platforms

Journal Article · 01 January 2019 · International Journal of Networking and Computing

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15803/ijnc.9.1_28 · OSTI ID:1492861

Herault, Thomas ^[1]; Robert, Yves ^[2]; Bouteiller, Aurelien ^[1]; Arnold, Dorian ^[3]; Ferreira, Kurt Brian ^[4]; George, George ^[1]; Dongarra, Jack ^[5]

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1. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
2. ENS Lyon (France); Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
3. Emory Univ., Atlanta, GA (United States)
4. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
5. Univ. of Manchester (United Kingdom); Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)

Input/output (I/O) from various sources often contend for scarcely available bandwidth. For example, checkpoint/restart (CR) protocols can help to ensure application progress in failure-prone environments. However, CR I/O alongside an application's normal, requisite I/O can increase I/O contention and might negatively impact performance. In this work, we consider different aspects (system-level scheduling policies and hardware) that optimize the overall performance of concurrently executing CR-based applications that share I/O resources. We provide a theoretical model and derive a set of necessary constraints to minimize the global waste on a given platform. Our results demonstrate that Young/Daly's optimal checkpoint interval, despite providing a sensible metric for a single, undisturbed application, is not sufficient to optimally address resource contention at scale. We show that by combining optimal checkpointing periods with contention-aware system-level I/O scheduling strategies, we can significantly improve overall application performance and maximize the platform throughput. Finally, we evaluate how specialized hardware, namely burst buffers, may help to mitigate the I/O contention problem. Altogether, these results provide critical analysis and direct guidance on how to design efficient, CR ready, large -scale platforms without a large investment in the I/O subsystem.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 1492861
• Report Number(s): SAND-2018-12751J; 669702
• Journal Information: International Journal of Networking and Computing, Vol. 9, Issue 1; ISSN 2185-2839
• Publisher: IJNC Editorial CommitteeCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English