A grid file system combines multiple storage devices to be accessed as a single unit by multiple users, with redundancies and load balancing. Challenges include latency and maintaining a common namespace. Standardization is limited due to customized solutions, limiting use to non-critical and research purposes.
A grid file system is a type of computer architecture designed to combine several storage devices in such a way that they can be accessed as a single logical unit by multiple users. Both storage devices and users can be located anywhere from the same room to around the world, and the grid file system will optimally abstract interfaces so that all users interact with the system consistently. A properly implemented grid file system is a component of a fully distributed computing system in which many or all resources are shared among users. In addition to sharing a single virtual drive, a grid file system can also implement redundancies to protect data from catastrophic loss and load balancing to ensure that the grid file system is always available. Some challenges in creating a grid file system include preventing latency from corrupting data, providing fast and secure client-server configuration for file access, and ensuring that a common namespace is maintained and propagated across all networks independents using the file system.
The concept of a grid file system is the realization of distributed resources across a network. The ultimate goal is to allow any user to access the grid system naturally and be able to interact with files as if they were on a local disk. All users should be able to use exactly the same file and directory structure, no matter where the data is located. This means that, with redundancy, two users could be looking at the same file but the file loaded and viewed in each case could have been loaded from a different physical disk depending on the availability of drives at the time of the request. The file system mechanics make this type of interaction transparent to users.
A big complication with using a grid file system is latency. A situation can arise where two users are looking at the same file but the file is spread across multiple drives in both cases. If one user edits the file and saves it in the same amount of time as another user, unpredictable results may occur. Depending on several factors, there may be two different versions of the file in two locations within the grid, or only one file may be saved, depending on the hardware and file system implementation.
Complex problems, particularly with wide area networks (WANs) and Internet-based grids, have prevented any sort of standardization in the development of grid file systems. Built grids tend to be customized, along with custom software solutions. For this reason, the use of a formal grid-type file system has been limited primarily to non-critical uses and research.
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