GPFS (General Parallel File System) is a high-performance clustered file system developed by IBM that can be deployed in shared disk or shared-nothing distributed parallel modes. It was created to address the growing imbalance between increasing CPU, memory, and network speeds, and the relatively slower growth of disk drive speeds. GPFS provides high scalability, availability, and advanced data management features like snapshots and replication. It is used extensively by large companies and supercomputers due to its ability to handle large volumes of data and high input/output workloads in distributed, parallel environments.

1. GPFS: General Parallel File
System
Why is it needed?
What is GPFS and its features?
Where it is being used?

2. Why GPFS is needed?

3. Growth Rate of Components
• ✓ CPU speed performance has increased 8
to 10 times.
• ✓ DRAM speed performance has increased 7
to 9 times.
• ✓ Network speed performance has increased
100 times.
• ✓ Bus speed performance has increased 20
times.
• ✓ But Hard disk drive (HDD) speed
performance has increased only 1.2 times.

4. Three Important Functions
of Enterprise Storage
• ✓ Store data
• ✓ Protect data from being lost
• ✓ Feed data to the computer’s processors
(so they can keep doing work)

5. Existing Solutions Inability
• DAS, NAS, SAN [alone]
• Many data centers have become victims of
“filer-sprawl”
• Data administration and management
(such as migration, backups, archiving)
costs to skyrocket!
• I/O performance & application workflow

6. What is GPFS
• The General Parallel File System (GPFS) is a high
performance clustered file system. It can be
deployed in shared disk or shared nothing
distributed parallel modes.
• Developer(s): IBM
• Operating system: AIX / Linux / Windows Server
• License: Proprietary
• System Introduced: 1998 (AIX)
• Max. volume size: 8 YB
• Max. file size: 8 EB
• Max. number of files: 264 per file system
• File system permissions: POSIX

7. GPFS Current Usage
• It is used by many of the world's largest commercial
companies, as well as some of the supercomputers on
the Top 500 List.
• For example, GPFS was the filesystem of the ASC
Purple Supercomputer which was composed of more
than 12,000 processors and 2 petabytes of total disk
storage spanning more than 11,000 disks.
• IBM,s GPFS is extensively used across multiple
industries like Government, Oil and Gas, Life Sciences,
Media/Entertainment, Financial services

8. GPFS Features
Standard file system interface with POSIX semantics
– Metadata on shared storage
– Distributed locking for read/write semantics
• Highly scalable
– High capacity (up to 2^99 bytes file system size, up to 2^63 files per file
system)
– High throughput (TB/s)
– Wide striping
– Large block size (up to 16MB)
– Multiple nodes write in parallel
• Advanced data management
– ILM (storage pools), Snapshots
– Backup HSM (DMAPI)
– Remote replication, WAN caching
• High availability
– Fault tolerance (node, disk failures)
– On-line system management (add/remove nodes, disks, ...)

9. References
• GPFS official homepage
• GPFS resources (including download)
• GPFS at Almaden
• GPFS Mailing List
• GPFS User Group
• IBM GPFS Product Documentation
• IBM GPFS Wiki