YFS, a High Performance Global File System That is Backward Compatible with AFS

The High Energy Physics community has used the Andrew File System (AFS) for the last fifteen years in order to provide federated collaborative global data access that collectively reaches petabyte scale. Transitioning to alternative file systems has proven difficult if not impossible due to the number of deployed clients, the quantity of stored data, and application dependencies on functional behaviors unique to AFS. However, AFS protocols no longer can provide acceptable scalability or throughput performance at the speed of current day networks and CPUs. As a result, there is significant need for a new global file system that is backward-compatible with AFS and which provides the scalability, throughput, and client-operating-system compatibility required to satisfy the needs of applications throughout the next decade. This project will improve the performance of existing AFS protocol implementations by correcting and enhancing transport retransmission algorithms, adding support for asynchronous remote procedure calls, and redesigning clients and servers to manage requests using an event based work flow model. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: In addition to the widespread use of AFS among the DOE laboratories, there is significant deployment among private U.S. companies in the financial, manufacturing, and service industries. The migration of these existing users to a significantly improved backward-compatible file system would represent a reasonable market for the new technology. Beyond that, the next generation of mobile devices could take advantage of a secure global access data store, preventing the need to copy data onto each and every device and flash disk carried by individuals.