StoRM: grid middleware for disk resource management

Abstract

Within a Grid the possibility of managing storage space offering POSIX access to disk is fundamental.On the other hand, the increasing availability of high performance computing resources raises the need for fast and efficient I/O operations and drives the development of parallel, distributed file systems.Through StoRM (Storage Resource Manager) an end user client can reserve and manage space on disk-based storage systems.It can allow access the space either in a Grid environment or locally in a transparent way via classic POSIX calls.The StoRM architecture is based on a pluggable model that uses file-systems such as GPFS with an SRM interface.StoRM includes quota management and a space guard, and serves as policy enforcement point (PEP) for the Grid Policy Management System over disk resources.In this paper we describe the StoRM architecture and the preliminary functional results obtained.