Ibm General Parallel File System - IBM NeXtScale System Planning And Implementation Manual

Platform Cluster Manager Advanced Edition deploys the entire cluster through a
single self-serve request and delivers a fully configured and running cluster that
is ready to use without other steps for configuration and startup. It manages
physical and virtual machines, storage clients, and network switches.

8.3 IBM General Parallel File System

The IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) is a high-performance,
shared-disk file management solution that provides fast, reliable access to a
common set of file data, online storage management, scalable access, and
tightly integrated information lifecycle tools that can manage petabytes of data
and billion of files.
By virtualizing your file storage space and allowing multiple systems and
applications to share common pools of storage, GPFS provides you the flexibility
to transparently administer the infrastructure without disrupting applications, thus
lowering storage costs and reducing management overhead.
GPFS ensures that there is no single point of failure. Unlike some file systems
designs, GPFS is not reliant on centralized management to determine file
location and placement. This ensures continuous and highly available access to
data in case of software or hardware node failures.
IBM GPFS powers many of the world's largest scientific supercomputers and
commercial applications that require high-speed access to large volumes of data,
as shown in the following examples:
Digital media
Engineering design
Business intelligence
Financial analytics
Seismic data processing
Geographic information systems
Scalable file serving
IBM GPFS provides the following features:
Clustered Network File System (CNFS)
By using IBM GPFS, you can configure a subset of the nodes in the cluster to
provide a highly available solution for exporting GPFS file systems by using
Network File System (NFS). The participating nodes are designated as
Cluster NFS (CNFS) member nodes and the entire setup is frequently
referred to as CNFS or a CNFS cluster.
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IBM NeXtScale System Planning and Implementation Guide