Parallel File System: Know About Its Designing And Implementation

When a high performance computing cluster is designed, system architect has three choices of file systems. The Network File Systems (NFS), Storage Area Network (SAN) and the parallel file system. Let’s discuss in detail about the parallel file systems.

These file systems have some nodes which are connected with the I/O nodes that serves data to the rest of the cluster. The major advantage with the parallel file system is that it includes a global name space, scalability and capability for distributing large files across the network. As is evident, in a cluster environment numerous large files are shared across multiple nodes which make parallel file systems an ideal option. Generally, the architecture of a parallel file system includes a metadata server (MDS) which have all the details regarding data on the I/O nodes. Basically, metadata is considered to be the detailed information about a file contained in the system. The details include file name, its location, and owner. In some cases, the parallel file systems use a dedicated server for the MDS. In other cases the parallel file systems distribute the functionality of the MDS across the I/O nodes. In the parallel file systems there are three file systems which are parallel virtual file system (PVFS), the luster file system (LFS) and the IBRIX fusion file system.

The parallel virtual file system is an open source parallel file system for Linux-based clusters. It is a very simple file system which can be easily installed and is compatible with the existing binaries. It offers three interfaces through which the files can be accessed. Another petabyte file system called as luster file system is an open source file system which stores Meta data on a cluster of MDSs and stores file data as objects on object storage targets. Finally, the third parallel file system which is popularly known as the IBRIX fusion is a commercial file system which has a loosely coupled approach for distributing the Meta data of the file system.

Use these file systems according to your business requirements and have a high performance system.

By: Maddy4u

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The author is an experienced Content writer and publisher on the topics related to parallel file system and petabyte file system.