Data consistency protocol for distributed file systems

Large-scale, data-intensive computing requires a sophisticated technology to be integrated with distributed file systems to provide clients with reliable and scalable high-performance accesses to the stored data. The clients physically share storage devices connected via a network like GigaEthernet or fibre channel and, on those clients, distributed file systems take responsibility for providing coordinated accesses and consistent views of shared data. In such a distributed computing environment, one of the major issues in achieving substantial I/O performance and scalability is to build an efficient locking protocol. In this paper, we present a distributed locking protocol that enables multiple nodes to simultaneously write their data to distinct data portions of a file, while providing the consistent view of client cached data. We conclude with an evaluation of the performance of our locking protocol.