Distributed filesystems (DFSs) have been a cornerstone of modern large-scale storage environments such as HPC (High-Performance Computing) systems by providing rapid data access to support I/O-demanding applications. With the emergence of burst buffer...
Distributed filesystems (DFSs) have been a cornerstone of modern large-scale storage environments such as HPC (High-Performance Computing) systems by providing rapid data access to support I/O-demanding applications. With the emergence of burst buffer layers, DFSs are increasingly repurposed for campaign storage, where scalability and cost-effectiveness are of paramount importance. However, existing DFSs often suffer from scalability issues due to their centralized metadata management. Alternatively, object storage systems have gained popularity thanks to their simplified interfaces and scale-out architectures, yet most users continue to favor the POSIX interface for its global hierarchical namespace and fine-grained access control.
In this dissertation, we propose a scalable userspace distributed filesystem for modern storage environments, which is capable of delivering highperformance
for extremely large and numerous files and complying with POSIX requirements. First, we introduce ArkFS, a decentralized DFS on object storage in which clients collaboratively participate in metadata management, eliminating the need for remote metadata servers. Second, we present RFUSE, a novel userspace filesystem framework that leverages per-core ring channels for scalable message communication between the kernel and userspace.
By taking into account the scalability of both the filesystem implementation and the framework’s structural design, this approach can fully exploit the performance of modern storage environments.