Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
5-1-1996
Technical Report Number
PCS-TR96-286
Abstract
Most current multiprocessor file systems are designed to use multiple disks in parallel, using the high aggregate bandwidth to meet the growing I/O requirements of parallel scientific applications. Many multiprocessor file systems provide applications with a conventional Unix-like interface, allowing the application to access multiple disks transparently. This interface conceals the parallelism within the file system, increasing the ease of programmability, but making it difficult or impossible for sophisticated programmers and libraries to use knowledge about their I/O needs to exploit that parallelism. In addition to providing an insufficient interface, most current multiprocessor file systems are optimized for a different workload than they are being asked to support. We introduce Galley, a new parallel file system that is intended to efficiently support realistic scientific multiprocessor workloads. We discuss Galley's file structure and application interface, as well as the performance advantages offered by that interface.
Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation
Nieuwejaar, Nils and Kotz, David, "The Galley Parallel File System" (1996). Computer Science Technical Report PCS-TR96-286. https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/cs_tr/133
Comments
Revised version appeared in the journal Parallel Computing. This paper is a combination of two papers, from ICS '96 and a IOPADS '96.