Filesystems for Grid Computing

Grid computing systems such as the Open Science Grid and the NSF TeraGrid give users easy access to hundreds or thousands of CPUs at once. However, within computing grids, it is not always easy to access one's data. Traditional filesystems such as NFS and AFS are not usable in most grid computing systems, because they require privileged access to install and use at both client and server side. A user of grid computing rarely has such access.

To remedy this problem, we have designed and implemented a variety of filesystems for grid computing, all based on the Parrot and Chirp software. These user-level tools can be deployed without special privileges into existing grids, and used to access data wherever it may be located. We work directly with users in bioinformatics and high energy physics to design and deploy production filesystem services. You can download and use our software from this page.

Publications

(Showing papers with tag filesystems. See all papers instead.)

Chao Zheng, Lukas Rupprecht, Vasily Tarasov, Douglas Thain, Mohamed Mohamed, Dimitrios Skourtis, Amit S. Warke and Dean Hildrebarnd, Wharf: Sharing Docker Images in a Distributed File System, ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, pages 12, October, 2018. DOI: 10.1145/3267809.3267836

Tim Shaffer and Douglas Thain, Taming Metadata Storms in Parallel Filesystems with MetaFS, Workshop on Parallel Data Storage and Data Intensive Scalable Computing Systems, pages 25-30, November, 2017. DOI: 10.1145/3149393.3149401

Jakob Blomer, Predrag Buncic, Rene Meusel, Gerardo Ganis, Igor Sfiligoi and Douglas Thain, The Evolution of Global Scale Filesystems for Scientific Software Distribution, IEEE/AIP Computing in Science and Engineering, 17(6), pages 61-71, December, 2015. DOI: 10.1109/MCSE.2015.111

Patrick Donnelly and Douglas Thain, Fine-Grained Access Control in the Chirp Distributed File System, IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud, and Grid Computing, May, 2012. DOI: 10.1109/CCGrid.2012.128

Hoang Bui, A Rich Metadata Filesystem for Scientific Data, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Notre Dame, May, 2012.

Douglas Thain, Michael Albrecht, Hoang Bui, Peter Bui, Rory Carmichael, Scott Emrich, and Patrick Flynn, Data Intensive Computing with Clustered Chirp Servers, Tevfik Kosar, Data Intensive Distributed Computing: Challenges and Solutions for Large Scale Information Management, pages 140-154, IGI, January, 2012. ISBN: 9781615209712

Patrick Donnelly, Peter Bui, Douglas Thain, Attaching Cloud Storage to a Campus Grid Using Parrot, Chirp, and Hadoop, IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science, pages 488-495, November, 2010. DOI: 10.1109/CloudCom.2010.74

Hoang Bui, Peter Bui, Patrick Flynn and Douglas Thain, ROARS: A Scalable Repository for Data Intensive Scientific Computing, The Third International Workshop on Data Intensive Distributed Computing at ACM HPDC 2010, June, 2010. DOI: 10.1145/1851476.1851587

Gabrielle Compostella, Simone Pagan Griso, Donatella Lucchesi, Igor Sfiligoi, and Douglas Thain, CDF Software Distribution on the Grid using Parrot, Computing in High Energy Physics, May, 2009. DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/219/6/062009

Hoang Bui, Michael Kelly, Christopher Lyon, Mark Pasquier, Deborah Thomas, Patrick Flynn, and Douglas Thain, Experience with BXGrid: A Data Repository and Computing Grid for Biometrics Research, Journal of Cluster Computing, 12(4), pages 373, April, 2009. DOI: 10.1007/s10586-009-0098-7

Douglas Thain, Christopher Moretti, and Jeffrey Hemmes, Chirp: A Practical Global Filesystem for Cluster and Grid Computing, Journal of Grid Computing, 7(1), pages 51-72, March, 2009. DOI: 10.1007/s10723-008-9100-5

Douglas Thain and Christopher Moretti, Efficient Access to Many Small Files in a Filesystem for Grid Computing, IEEE Grid Computing, pages 243-250, September, 2007. DOI: 10.1109/GRID.2007.4354139

Christopher Moretti, Flexible Object Based Filesystems for Scientific Computing, M.S. Thesis, University of Notre Dame, April, 2007.

Christophe Blanchet, Remi Mollon, Douglas Thain, and Gilbert Deleage, Grid Deployment of Legacy Bioinformatics Applications with Transparent Data Access, IEEE Grid Computing, pages 120-127, September, 2006. DOI: 10.1109/ICGRID.2006.311006

Douglas Thain, Operating System Support for Space Allocation in Grid Storage Systems, IEEE Grid Computing, pages 104-111, September, 2006. DOI: 10.1109/ICGRID.2006.311004

Jeffrey Hemmes and Douglas Thain, Cacheable Decentralized Groups for Grid Resource Access Control, IEEE Grid Computing, pages 192-199, September, 2006. DOI: 10.1109/ICGRID.2006.311015

Sander Klous, Jamie Frey, Se-Chang Son, Douglas Thain, Alain Roy, Miron Livny, and Jo van den Brand, Transparent Access to Grid Resources for User Software, Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 18(7), pages 787-801, June, 2006. DOI: 10.1002/cpe.961

Stefano Belforte, Matthew Normal, Subir Sarkar, Ifor Sfiligoi, Douglas Thain, Frank Wuerthwein, Using Condor Glide-Ins and Parrot to Move from Dedicated Resources to the Grid, Lecture Notes in Informatics, 81, pages 285-292, March, 2006.

Douglas Thain, Christopher Moretti, and Igor Sfiligoi, Transparently Distributing CDF Software with Parrot, Computing in High Energy Physics, pages 1-4, February, 2006.

Douglas Thain, Christopher Moretti, Paul Madrid, Phil Snowberger, and Jeff Hemmes, The Consequences of Decentralized Security in a Cooperative Storage System, Workshop on Security in Storage at IEEE FAST, pages 82-94, December, 2005. DOI: 10.1109/SISW.2005.11

Douglas Thain, Sander Klous, Justin Wozniak, Paul Brenner, Aaron Striegel, and Jesus Izaguirre, Separating Abstractions from Resources in a Tactical Storage System, IEEE/ACM Supercomputing, pages 55-67, November, 2005. DOI: 10.1109/SC.2005.64

Douglas Thain and Miron Livny, Parrot: An Application Environment for Data-Intensive Computing, Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience, 6(3), pages 9-18, September, 2005.

John Bent, Douglas Thain, Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau, Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, and Miron Livny, Explicit Control in a Batch Aware Distributed File System, USENIX Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), pages 365-378, April, 2004.

Douglas Thain and Miron Livny, Parrot: Transparent User-Level Middleware for Data Intensive Computing, Workshop on Adaptive Grid Middleware at PACT, January, 2003.

Douglas Thain, Jim Basney, Se-Chang Son, and Miron Livny, The Kangaroo Approach to Data Movement on the Grid, IEEE High Performance Distributed Computing, pages 325-333, August, 2001. DOI: 10.1109/HPDC.2001.945200