The design and implementation of the Pasda parallel file system

This paper presents a parallel file system, called Pasda, that not only addresses the problem of data rate mismatches between the requirements of an application, storage devices, and the inter-connection medium but also supports parallel file accesses in general purpose distributed systems. The Pasda (PArallel Storage Devices Accelerator) parallel file system uses a high-speed interconnection medium to provide high data transfer rates by driving multiple slower storage devices in parallel. A good parallel file accessing interface is also supported by Pasda. The user of Pasda can control the physical layout and partitioning of the file data, and can access files in parallel. An FDDI-based prototype of Pasda is constructed. The prototype provides faster data rates than access to the local SCSI disk.