dunc@eecg.toronto.edu (Duncan Elliott) (09/30/89)
Electrical Engineering Computer Group
Cider Seminar Series
The Hurricane File System
by
Georg Feil
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Toronto
Time: Friday, Oct. 6, 1989, 12:05 --- Place: GB 248
The Hurricane File System (HFS) is a distributed, location-
transparent file system for Hurricane, a multiprocessor operating
system being developed as part of U of T's Hector project. HFS is
distributed in the sense that it consists of multiple autonomous
entities that communicate via message passing. It has the
appearance and features of popular existing file systems such as
UNIX, with added features and improvements that make it usable in a
multiprocessor context. However, we are not restraining ourselves by
making UNIX compatibility an explicit goal. HFS is designed to
exploit the performance advantages, fault-tolerance benefits, and
potential scalability that a parallel system like Hector can
provide.
A major part of the work has been to construct a working
prototype of the file system. The prototype runs under UNIX in a
test configuration that simulates all required aspects of Hector and
Hurricane, and uses UNIX to replace missing device-level
functionality. A rather unconventional form of trace-driven
simulation has been set up in this test environment using traces of
actual file system activity collected by Prof. Songnian Zhou while
he was at Berkeley. This allows us to evaluate the system and helps
predict some of its future performance characteristics.
Coming Soon
Date Who Topic
Nov. 10 Eugenia Distefano A Multi-DSP Board for Hector