Design and performance of the Dawning Cluster File System

Cluster file system is a key component of system software of clusters. It attracts more and more attention in recent years. In this paper, we introduce the design and implementation of DCFS (the Dawning Cluster File System) - a cluster file system developed for Dawning4000-L. DCFS is a global file system sharing among all cluster nodes. Applications see a single uniform name space, and can use system calls to access DCFS files. The features of DCFS include its scalable architecture, metadata policy, server-side optimization, flexible communication mechanism and easy management. Performance tests of DCFS on Dawning4000-L show that DCFS can provide high aggregate bandwidth and throughput.