Conditions That Favor Separating Applications and IODs

You should avoid running applications on I/O server nodes when some or all of the following conditions exist.

• Smaller nodes.

• Slow disk storage devices (single disks, for example) on each node.

• Relatively high-performance cluster interconnect, such as SCI or ATM.

• Large number of applications competing for node resources.

In this case, the competition for memory, bus bandwidth, and CPU cycles may offset any performance advantages local storage would provide.