Hub/Switch Installation Guide
HPSS Installation Guide September 2002 19
Release 4.5, Revision 2
Chapter 1 HPSS Basics
1.1 Introduction
The High Performance Storage System (HPSS) is software that provides hierarchical storage
management and services for very large storage environments. HPSS may be of interest in
situations having present and future scalability requirements that are very demanding in terms of
total storage capacity, file sizes, data rates, number of objects stored, and numbers of users. HPSS
is part of an open, distributed environment based on OSF Distributed Computing Environment
(DCE) products that formthe infrastructure ofHPSS. HPSS isthe resultof a collaborativeeffort by
leadingUSGovernmentsupercomputerlaboratoriesandindustrytoaddressveryreal,veryurgent
high-end storage requirements. HPSS is offered commercially by IBM Worldwide Government
Industry, Houston, Texas.
HPSSprovidesscalableparallelstoragesystemsforhighlyparallelcomputersaswellastraditional
supercomputers and workstation clusters. Concentrating on meeting the high end of storage
systemanddata managementrequirements,HPSSisscalableanddesignedtostoreuptopetabytes
(10
15
) of dataand touse network-connected storage devices totransfer dataat rates up tomultiple
gigabytes (10
9
) per second.
HPSS provides a large degree of control for the customer site to manage their hierarchical storage
system. Using configuration information defined by the site, HPSS organizes storage devices into
multiple storage hierarchies. Based on policy information defined by the site and actual usage
information, data arethen movedto theappropriate storage hierarchyand toappropriate levels in
the storage hierarchy.
1.2 HPSS Capabilities
A central technical goal of HPSS is to move large files between storage devices and parallel or
clusteredcomputers atspeeds many timesfasterthan today’scommercialstoragesystem software
products,andtodo thisina waythatis morereliableand manageablethan ispossiblewith current
systems. In order to accomplish this goal, HPSS is designed and implemented based on the
concepts described in the following subsections.
1.2.1 Network-centered Architecture
The focus of HPSS is the network, not a single server processoras inconventional storagesystems.
HPSS provides servers and movers that can be distributed across a high performance network to