Development of Fibre Channel Disk Clusters

50826-98-I Development of Fibre Channel Disk Clusters--Quantum Research Services, Inc., 5410-W Apex Highway, Durham, NC 27713-9434; (919) 544-4952 Dr. William L. Dunn, Principal Investigator Dr. Karen E. J. Dunn, Business Official DOE Grant No. DE-FG02-98ER82648 Amount: $75,000 The next generation of high energy physics experiments will produce extremely large datasets, some of order Petabytes, or 1,000 Terabytes (TB). Processed data will be stored in datasets of approximately 1-10 TB. The problem is that on-line storage devices that can handle handle these data volumes and are accessible by a variety of user platforms are relatively expensive. This project will develop software, which can run on inexpensive personal computers, that controls clusters of inexpensive fibre channel disks drives. In Phase I, application program interface software will be prepared for multiple fibre channel disk drives. A rudimentary fibre channel cluster system design will be developed and constructed, control software will be developed, and the system will be integrated and tested, in order to demonstrate that fast and reliable mass storage can be achieved on clusters of relatively inexpensive devices. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The proposed technology will have direct benefit to the upcoming high energy physics experiments scheduled for the years 2000 through 2003. The technology is generic and thus has much broader application to large data warehouse systems (such as the Genome Data Base), and to databases for satellite imagery, geographic information systems, weather data, and video-on-demand._