Development of a High Performance Storage System (HPSS)

The overall objective of the project was the development of a parallel high performance storage software package capable of data transfer rates above 1 gigabyte/see with files of essentially unlimited size. This necessitated modules for uniquely identifying files to be stored, for establishing the appropriate locale for the file in the storage hardware, for moving the file in parallel to the selected lode, and for making possible ready access to the file when desired. And all of this must be done with absolute accuracy and reliability while ensuring security at the requisite level. Responsibility for the various modules was distributed across the participating laboratories. The central LMER responsibility was the Storage System Management (SSM) package, the software package that controls all storage and access activities and provides readily understandable and complete information concerning system status to an operator. This information includes storage and access activity in progress; the location, size, and character of all files; and warning and error messages, among others. As such, SSM must be tightly coordinated with all of the HPSS modules and components and must represent in effect, a synthesis of all. The result of this very extensive LMER effort was an SSM system that required approximately 83,000 physical lines of computer code