A replicated file system for Grid computing

Abstract

To meet the rigorous demands of large-scale data sharing in global collaborations, we present a replication scheme for NFSv4 that supports mutable replication without sacrificing strong consistency guarantees. Experimental evaluation indicates a substantial performance advantage over a single-server system. With the introduction of a hierarchical replication control protocol, the overhead of replication is negligible even when applications mostly write and replication servers are widely distributed. Evaluation with the NAS Grid Benchmarks demonstrates that our system provides comparable and often better performance than GridFTP, the de facto standard for Grid data sharing. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.