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Parallel Storage Systems

(in German: Parallel Storage Systems )

Module-ID: FIN-INF-120480
Link: LSF
Responsibility: Prof. Dr. Michael Kuhn
Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Michael Kuhn
Classes:
  • Lecture Parallel Storage Systems
  • Exercise Parallel Storage Systems
 
Applicability in curriculum: - M.Sc. INF: Informatik
- M.Sc. INGINF: Informatik
- M.Sc. WIF: Informatik
- M.Sc. DKE: Data Processing for Data Science
- M.Sc. DE: Methoden der Informatik
- M.Sc. VC: Computer Science

Abbreviation

PSS

Credit Points

6

Semester

Summer

Term

ab 1.

Duration

1 Semester

Language

english

Level

Master

Intended learning outcomes:
The participants...

  • understand the architectures of parallel storage systems
  • optimize applications with regard to their I/O performance
  • understand important concepts of parallel I/O
  • create file systems with different persistence approaches in smaller teams
  • present solutions and results to other participants

Content:
Parallel programming is becoming increasingly important since even phones and laptops contain multiple processor cores nowadays. Supercomputers can contain up to several million cores and have become a useful and important tool for a wide range of scientific domains. The analyses and simulations enabled by them have accelerated the process of gaining scientific insight considerably. The amount of collected and produced data is growing exponentially; it has to be stored, analyzed and processed efficiently since I/O significantly affects overall performance. Vastly different rates of performance development for processors and storage hardware result in a performance imbalance, which makes it even more important to take a close look at storage systems in order to be able to meet future demands. The lecture will teach the fundamentals of parallel storage systems and I/O; the exercises will allow transferring and applying the acquired skills with a system programming language such as C, C++ or Rust. As part of the lecture, we will cover the complete storage stack: Storage devices and networks (hard disk drives, solid-state disks, storage area networks etc.), local and distributed file systems (in kernel and user space, novel concepts like snapshots and deduplication) as well as the I/O interfaces layered on top (POSIX, MPI-IO, NetCDF and ADIOS). Moreover, we will discuss reasons and solutions for performance problems as well as alternative approaches for I/O (such as cloud interfaces). Problems and examples will be motivated using real-world scientific applications.

Workload:

  • 56h contact hours
  • 124h self study

Pre-examination requirements: Type of examination: Teaching method / lecture hours per week (SWS):

Active and successful participation in the exercises

Oral exam

  • Lecture (2 SWS)
  • Exercise (2 SWS)
Prerequisites according to examination regulations: Recommended prerequisites:

keine

  • Practical knowledge of a programming language and the ability to create simple programs
  • Basic knowledge of operating systems and parallel systems
Media: Literature:

  • High Performance Parallel I/O (Prabhat und Quincey Koziol)

Comments:

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