parallel virtual file system

By Ali Alskaykha

PARALLEL VIRTUAL FILE SYSTEM

PV FS PV FS

D i s t r i b u t e d Fi l e S y s t e m :

Outline

Before PVFS PVFS Definition Develop PVFS Objectives and Goals Architecture

PVFS Cooperative Cache for PVFS (Coopc-PVFS)

Performance PVFS2 and Improvements Summary

Before PVFSIf my business has exploded, my desktops are out of storage, and

information is scattered everywhere!

Each user keeps his files on his PC; when someone needs a file they grab it with a USB flash drive or via email. When business grew the PCs are running out of storage. That's time to consolidate, centralize, and share file storage across the network.There are three basic ways:

1. Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) Direct attached storage refers to the storage attached directly to a PC or server



2. Storage Area Network (SAN) An alternative to using DAS is to separate storage from your servers and put it on its own specialized, high performance storage network called a storage area network (SAN)



3. Network File System (NFS)

NFS is a client/server application developed by Sun Microsystems It lets a user view, store and update files on a remote computer as though the files were on the user's local machine. The basic function of the NFS server is to allow its file systems to be accessed by any computer on an IP network. NFS clients access the server files by mounting the servers exported file systems.



Having all your data stored in a central location presents a number of problems: Scalability: arises when the number of computing nodes exceeds the

performance capacity of the machine exporting the file system; could add more memory, processing power and network interfaces at the NFS server, but you will soon run out of CPU, memory and PCI slots; the higher the node count, the less bandwidth (file I/O) individual node processes end up with

Availability: if NFS server goes down all the processing nodes have to wait until the server comes back into life.

Solution: Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS)

Parallel Virtual File System(PVFS)

Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS) is an open source implementation of a parallel file system developed specifically for Beowulf class parallel computers and Linux operating system

It is joint project between Clemson University and Argonne National Laboratory

PVFS has been released and supported under a GPL license since 1998. File System – allows users to store and retrieve data using common file

access methods (open, close, read, write) Parallel – stores data on multiple independent machines with separate

network connections Virtual – exists as a set of user-space daemons storing data on local file

systems

Develop PVFS

First developed in 1993 as parallel file system To study I/O patterns of parallel programs 1994, PVFS version 1 for a cluster of DEC Alpha workstations

1994, PVFS version 1 ported to Linux, released 1997 as open source

1999, PVFS version 2 (PVFS2) developed, released 2003

2005, PVFS version 1 retired

PVFS

Open source parallel file system for Linux clusters Distributes file data across multiple nodes Provides concurrent file access from multiple tasks

(clients)

node node node node node

Client

Client

ClientFile

concurrent file access

File data distributed

Objectives

Objectives Needed basic software platform to purpose further

research in parallel I/O and parallel file systems for Linux clusters

Need of parallel file system for Linux clusters for high-performance I/O

Goals

Goals Provide high-bandwidth access to file data for concurrent

read/write operations from multiple tasks Support multiple I/O APIs:

Native PVFS API UNIX/POSIX I/O API MPI-IO

Robust and scalable Easy for others to install and use

A RC H I T E C T U R E

Design Overview

Client-server system with multiple nodes User specifies which nodes serves as I/O nodes (servers) Files are striped across I/O nodes; this provides multiple paths

to data to achieve high-bandwidth access I/O daemons run on I/O nodes to handle local file storage

I/O node

I/O node

I/O node

I/O node

I/O node

I/O daemon I/O daemon I/O daemon I/O daemon I/O daemon

Client

Client

ClientFile

Design Overview (cont’d)

Single manger daemon to manage storage and access to all metadata of PVFS files

Read/write is handled by client library and I/O daemons

TCP for internal communication User-level implementation; no kernel modifications

needed Linux kernel module is available

File Metadata Manager

I/O node 0

I/O node 1

I/O node 2

I/O node 3

I/O node 4

I/O node 5

inode...basepcountssize

12345...2365536

Metadata

Stripe size: 65535 bytes

/local/f12345 /local/f12345 /local/f12345

Manger daemon manages storage of and access to all metadata

Metadata describes characteristics of file: permissions, owner/group, and physical distribution of file data

File: /pvfs/foo

/pvfs/foo

Manger

Daemon

I/O File Access and Data Storage

I/O daemons handles I/O file access and the storage of its file portion on local file system on the I/O node

Clients establish connections with I/O daemons to perform read/write operations

Client library sends descriptor of file region a client wants to access to I/O daemons

I/O node

I/O node

I/O node

I/O node

I/O node

I/O daemon I/O daemon I/O daemon I/O daemon I/O daemon

Client

Client

ClientFile

Establish connection

Client Library

Sends descriptor

Cooperative Cache (Coopc-PVFS)

Created for PVFS because PVFS does not support file system caching facility (client side)

To reduce servers’ load and increase high performance Client caches file blocks in client’s memory Cached file blocks shared among clients File block requests managed by a cache manager Scalable as number of clients increases

More memory in cooperative cache than in single file system cache

Coopc-PVFS Design

Coopc-PVFS added to the PVFS kernel module Cache manger manages cache blocks

(I/O Node) (I/O Node) (I/O Node)(Manager Daemon)

Coopc-PVFS Info Management

Hint-based cooperative cache: method to maintain accurate information about cached blocks in clients Manager Daemon keeps list of clients that opened file

before Client that opens file gets metadata of file and opened

clients lists Cache manager exchanges information about cached blocks

with other clients’ cache manager when client reads a block that’s not in its cache

Coopc-PVFS Consistency

Cache manger invalidates blocks cached in other clients before writing block to I/O node (server)

Application

Cache Manager Cache Manager Cache Manager

Manager Daemon I/O node I/O node I/O node

Writes to block

Block invalidation propagation request InvalidateInvalidate

Write block to I/O node

Coopc-PVFS Implementation

Cache manager does the memory management of cache blocks. Allocates cache blocks from kernel memory

P E R F O R M A N C E

Test Types

PVFS tested on two different high-speed networks: Fast Ethernet vs Myrinet

Coopc-PVFS: PVFS vs Coopc-PVFS Cache vs No cache

PVFS Test Config

60 nodes: some as I/O nodes some as compute nodes

Disk transfer rate: 13.5 to 21.5 MB/sec File-stripe size: 16 KB Variants for testing on Fast Ethernet and Myrinet:

Number of I/O nodes accessed Compute nodes I/O file size

Fast Ethernet Results

46 MB/sec

90 MB/sec

177 MB/sec

42 MB/sec

83 MB/sec

166 MB/sec

Reached limit of scalability with 24 compute nodes

222 MB/sec 226 MB/sec

Myrinet Results

138 MB/sec

255 MB/sec

450 MB/sec

93 MB/sec180 MB/sec

325 MB/sec

650 MB/sec

687 MB/sec

460 MB/sec

670 MB/sec

Largest number of compute nodes tested: 45

BTIO Benchmark Results

Matrix computation is done then writes solution data to a file at time intervals

Fix number of 16 I/O nodes was used

MB/sec

Coopc-PVFS Test Config

6 nodes:

Disk transfer rate: 13.5 to 21.5 MB/sec File-stripe size: 64 KB Variants for testing:

I/O node (sever) cache and no cache Coopc-PVFS cache and no cache

Manager Daemon

I/O node client client client client

Coopc-PVFS Matrix Multi Test

Server No

Cache

Server Cache

No one caches

Server cache

Coopc cache data

PVFS Coopc-PVFS

Matrix Multiplication program is read-dominant program

Read time reduced to almost 0 in Coopc-PVFS because file is cached once it is read

When server doesn’t cache in PVFS, Waiting time is larger than other cases because read time is larger than other cases

Coopc-PVFS BTIO Benchmark

BTIO benchmark programs are write-dominant

Used 4 BTIO programs

Read time of Coopc-PVFS shorter than in PVFS because clients cache files

Write time of Coopc-PVFS is longer than in PVFS

PVFS2 and Improvements

Distributed metadata to avoid single point of failure and performance bottleneck As systems continue to scale it becomes ever more likely that

any such single point of contact might become a bottleneck for applications

Stateless servers and clients (no locking subsystems) If server crashes another can be restarted

Added redundancy support

Summary

PVFS High performance parallel I/O for Linux clusters Scalable as number of I/O nodes increases Supports multiple I/O APIs Performance benefits from high-speed network

Cooperative Cache for PVFS Allows client to request file to another client instead of server Scalable as number of clients increases Block invalidation for consistency (client-initiated validation) Improves performance for reading, but not for writing

Works Cited

Philip H. Carns, Walter B. Ligon, III, Robert B. Ross and Rajeev Thakur, "PVFS: A Parallel File System for Linux Clusters," In Proc. of the 4th Annual Linux Showcase and Conference, October 2000, pages 317--327

In-Chul Hwang, Hojoong Kim, Hanjo Jung, Dong-Hwan Kim, Hojin Ghim, Seung-Ryoul Maeng, and Jung-Wan Cho, "Design and Implementation of the Cooperative Cache for PVFS", Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 3036/2004, pages 43 – 50

PVFS website http://www.parl.clemson.edu/pvfs/ (old) http://www.pvfs.org/ (current)

Parallel Virtual File System Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Virtual_File_System

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parallel virtual file system