I/O and data storage demands on modern computing systems have grown beyond limits that can be provided by traditional dedicated storage systems. In modern datacenters, it is now common to find large networks of shared storage devices. These specialized Network Storage systems provide shared access to data in two common ways: Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Networks (SAN). Our research explores next generation Network Storage architectures that take advantage of emerging Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) interconnect technologies such as Infiniband and VIA. Our goals are to design and implement network storage systems using RDMA and evaluate their performance, scalability and reliability.
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RDMA based interconnects were originally designed for user-level communication with the NIC while bypassing the OS. With the emergence of network storage protocols taking advantage of RDMA, simple direct access APIs are not enough to enable efficient sharing of resources and programmability. Mechanisms for buffer and endpoint management, flow control, and efficient exchange of remote address information (remote handles) are essential for any RDMA based protocol. We are building an RDMA Service Platform (RSP) which provides these mechanisms as a service inside the OS. We are evaluating our RSP using two popular network storage protocols over RDMA: a file based NAS protocol (NFS) and a block based SAN protocol (iSCSI).
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The advent of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) based interconnects
has increased the viability of building user-level file systems that
provide applications with low cost access to network attached storage,
directly from user-space.
In this project, our goals are to:
(i) Develop user-space NFS and Direct Access File Systems (DAFS)
implementations that provide low overhead access to network
attached storage, and
(ii) Investigate the trade-offs between user-level and in-kernel
file system implementations w.r.t. performance, portability and
features.
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Building a User-level Direct Access File System over Infiniband
Murali Rangarajan and Liviu Iftode.Accepted for publication at the 3rd Workshop on Novel Uses of System Area Networks (SAN-3), February 2004.
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Federated DAFS: Scalable Cluster-based Direct Access File Servers
Murali Rangarajan, Suresh Gopalakrishnan, Ashok Arumugam, Rabita Sarker and Liviu Iftode.Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Novel Uses of System Area Networks (SAN-2), February 8, 2003. Rutgers University Technical Report, DCS-TR-516
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Federated File Systems for Clusters with Remote Memory Communication
Suresh Gopalakrishnan, Ashok Arumugam, Liviu Iftode.Rutgers University Technical Report DCS-TR-472, December 2001
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