A High-Performance GriFTP Server at Desktop Cost

Abstract -- We prototype a storage ,system ,that provides the access performance ,of a ,well-endowed GridFTP deployment (e.g., using a cluster and a parallel file-system) at the modest cost of single desktop. Tothis end, we integrate GridFTP and a combination of dedicated but low-bandwidth (thus cheap) storage nodes and scavenged,storage from LAN-connected desktops that participate intermittently to the storage pool. The main advantage of this setupis that it alleviates the server I/O access bottleneck. Additionally, the specific data access pattern of GridFTP, that is, the fact that data accesses are mostly sequential, allows for optimizations that result in a high-performance storage system. To provide data durability when facing intermittent participation of the storage resources, we use an intelligent replication scheme,that minimizes,the volume of internal transfers that impact the low-bandwidth storage nodes.