An Efficient Parallel File System for Cluster Grids

ePVM is an extension of the well known PVM programming system, whose main goal is to enable PVM applications to run on computing nodes belonging to non-routable private networks, but connected to the Internet through publicly addressable IP front-end nodes. However, in order to enable large-scale PVM applications to effectively manage the enormous volumes of data they usually generate, ePVM needs a parallel file system. This paper presents ePIOUS, the optimized porting of the PIOUS parallel file system under ePVM. ePIOUS has been designed so as to take into account the two-levels physical network topology characterizing the “cluster grids” normally built by ePVM. To this end, ePIOUS exploits the ePVM architecture to implement a file caching service that is able to speed up file accesses across clusters.