CITI: pNFS

Linux pNFS features a pluggable client architecture that harnesses the potential of pNFS as a universal and scalable metadata protocol by enabling dynamic support for file layout format, storage protocol, and file system policies. The architecture has been tested with the file, block, object, and PVFS2 access methods.

WIKI

pNFS Wiki

Mailing List

Please feel free to join our Linux pNFS development mailing list. It is archived here.

Papers

pdf Dean Hildebrand, Marc Eshel, Roger Haskin, Phil Andrews, Patricia Kovatch, John White "Deploying pNFS Across the WAN: First Steps in HPC Grid Computing," in Proceedings the 9th LCI International Conference on High-Performance Clustered Computing, Urbana, IL, April 2008.
pdf Dean Hildebrand and Peter Honeyman, "Direct-pNFS: Scalable, Transparent, and Versatile Access to Parallel File Systems," in Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing, Monterey, CA, June 2007.
pdf Dean Hildebrand, Peter Honeyman, and Wm. A. (Andy) Adamson, "pNFS and Linux: Working Towards a Heterogeneous Future," in Proceedings the 8th LCI International Conference on High-Performance Clustered Computing, Lake Tahoe, CA, May 2007.
pdf Wm. A. (Andy) Adamson, Dean Hildebrand, Peter Honeyman, Shawn McKee, and Jiaying Zhang, "Extending NFSv4 for Petascale Data Management," in Proceedings of the HPDC Workshop on Next-Generation Distributed Data Management, Paris, France, June 2006.
pdf Dean Hildebrand, Lee Ward, and Peter Honeyman, "Large Files, Small Writes, and pNFS," in Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS06), Cairns, Australia, June 2006.
pdf (Original pNFS paper) Dean Hildebrand and Peter Honeyman, "Exporting Storage Systems in a Scalable Manner with pNFS," in Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE - 13th NASA Goddard (MSST2005) Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, Monterey, California, April 2005.

Documentation and Articles

Link Network Appliance paper in ACM Queue: Standardizing Storage Clusters, vol. 5, no. 6 - September / October 2007
Link Panasas specific pNFS information with some additional links to various pNFS articles

Latest Code

All pNFS code now resides in 'git'. Please see the wiki above.

Note: All pNFS with PVFS2 support (via the pvfs2 or file layout driver) is outdated and no longer works with the latest versions of the pNFS Linux kernel and PVFS2. Patches for this support are now included with the PVFS2 source tree. Please email the pNFS mailing list if you have a desire to port this code to the latest version of Linux and PVFS2.

Outdated Code

Notes: The base PVFS2 code tree was taken from the Argonne PVFS2 CVS repository.

Linux 2.6.17 (20061114)

pNFS - Includes the NFSv4 File Layout Driver
PVFS2 1.5.1 Layout Driver
PVFS2 1.5.1 Server

Notes: The PVFS2 server can now support/generate PVFS2 and File-based layouts. (Due to a lack of a server-to-server protocol, file layouts must use NFSv4 zero stateids)

Linux 2.6.16 (20060519)
- pNFS 2.6.16 Kernel - Includes the NFSv4 File Layout Driver
- PVFS2 CVS Layout Driver
- PVFS2 CVS Server
Linux 2.6.14 (20060314)
- pNFS 2.6.14 Kernel
- PVFS2 1.3.0 Layout Driver
- PVFS2 1.3.0 Server
The patches below are outdated, but give a first cut of the pNFS client and NFSv4 File Layout Driver. They apply to the stock Linux 2.6.14 kernel available here.