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Framework for Loosely Coupled Wide Area File System Access: Distributed and Parallel File Systems

Overview

Using the Data Intensive Computing Environment’s (DICE) real-world network test-bed, the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) explored the development of an optimized framework for loosely coupled wide area network file system access. OSC is a leading organization in both computing and networking and is a fully scalable center equipped with mid-range machines that match those found at the National Science Foundation and other national laboratories. OSC is represented by members of academia, industry and research. For more information on OSC and their capabilities please visit www.osc.edu.

Challenge

Although the use of wide area networks has become a commonplace practice in order to pool together multiple, geographically dispersed resources, a common challenge is overcoming the latency issues that arise from the long-range data sharing and often cause a loss in throughput. The main challenge areas this project addresses are distributed and parallel file systems, global data sharing technologies and parallel I/O over long-haul pipes.

Objective

The project objective was to establish an improved framework for wide area network file system access that both performs better and is easier to implement than a general purpose file system.

Results

OSC established an expandable, improved framework for wide area network file system access based on the common usage of read-only data access. This system extends the existing Parallel Virtual File System by adding both metadata mirroring and data-caching components.

Ultimate Value

From their discoveries on the DICE test-bed, OSC was successful in its development of a flexible, extensible framework for realizing a wide area, read-only file system. The established system decreases latency issues by delivering near local metadata performance to remote systems and imposes minimal overhead at the data site.

The flexible architecture of this framework involves minimal modification to the file system software and could potentially be adopted for other parallel file systems.

 

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