GROWL: Storage Resource Broker Library

1. GROWL: Storage Resource Broker Library

2. SRB BASICS • SRB is the Storage Resource Broker developed by SDSC • This project has forked, and we use the SDSC branch in preference to the commercial General Dynamics branch • SRB is a client-server piece of middleware • Provides a uniform interface to heterogeneous networked data resources • Datasets can be accessed by metadata properties rather than physical name/location. This feature appears not to be widely exploited. • Primary use of SRB is as a distributed file system, especially for archives of large files.

3. EXAMPLE SYSTEM CLIENT SRB SERVER SRB SERVER TAPE STORE UNIX FILESTORE NTFS FILESTORE

4. CURRENT INTERFACES • Scommands • UNIX shell-like command line interface • JARGON • Java programming interface • MySRB • Web based, graphical explorer-type model • SDSC C API • Allows total control but at the cost of a complex interface

5. OUR APPROACH • A new C-based API • Commonly used language • Highly portable • Requires no extra additions to GROWL • Greatly simplified interface • Easier to pick up and use • Option to use existing interfaces is left open • Originally designed to statically link with client code

6. EXAMPLES status=srbStart(); if(0==status) { srbSetCurrResource(DEFAULT_RESOURCE); srbSetTransferBufferSize(65536); status=srbPutFile(“/home/alb23.eminerals/uploaded.txt”, ”test.txt”, NULL); (void) srbGetDirectory(“./dl_directory”, ”/home/alb23.eminerals/bin”); srbEnd(); }

7. FUTURE DEVELOPMENT • To fit new GROWL architecture, a new C++ module is being written • Will run on the GROWL server • Uses the GROWL C API to communicate with SRB resources • Uses the GROWL Files API to communicate with non-SRB resources • New user interface becomes a rough 2-phase commit model. • Transaction history will be kept