Minutes of Grid File System BoF Session
June 28, 2003
GGF8, Seattle

* Proposed Chair

 - Osamu Tatebe (Grid Technology Research Center, AIST)
   + Grid Datafarm

* Examples of large-scale (proprietary) data grid technologies that
  handle grid files or data sets

 - Legion, Avaki
 - SDSC Storage Resource Broker (SRB)
 - AIST Grid Datafarm
 - EDG (w/ Replica location service)
 - Farsite, OceanStore
 - AFS, DFS, ...

* Relationship to Grid services

 - File management and access control issues
   - billions of GSHs, google style vs yahoo directory style
 - Consistency management issues
 - Security issues

* Example: Core Services for Reliable File System Services

 - Virtual Filesystem Directory Service (VFDS)
   (Hierarchical namespace with filesystem metadata,
    unique path name, access control, write lock, application-specific
    metadata)
 - Replica location service
 - File transport service

VFDS provides hierarchical namespace with filesystem metadata on top
of replica location service.

- Points of discussion on the example

Is it possible to provide locking and ACLs at this higher level?
- These functionalities are not an indispensable requirement but a
recommended feature.  The implementation is a research issue.

Does the directory service include descriptive attributes? - Yes.

* Proposed Charter

Grid File System Research Group explores issues related to file system
based data sets in grid computing environments.

We are interested in the possibility of federating namespace of data
sets in the existing physical file systems and other storage
resources.  The research group will also investigate on managing file
like data sets through the application of grid service oriented
architecture.

The objective of the group is to provide a forum for discussing
approaches to facilitate sharing data sets using a file system based
view of grid data and to promote the use of common services provided
by other working groups.

Initially, the proposed research group aims to identify the
requirements and functionalities for Grid file systems.  To achieve
this goal, we undertake the following tasks:

 - Survey research projects and products related to the Grid and
   wide-area filesystems

 - Organize and document requirements of Grid filesystems from
   application's perspective

- Points of discussion

Should this group form a WG not RG? - First RG, standardization could
be done in WG later.

* 1-year milestone

 Jun 2003, GGF8   BoF
 Oct 2003, GGF9   First draft of a survey and a requirement documents
 Mar 2004, GGF10  Provide examples of service oriented file system federation
 Jun 2004, GGF11  Final version of documents will be submitted

- Points of discussion

Not fine/complete enough: be more specific
Need to estimate interest

* Relationship to other GGF groups

 - OREP-WG
 - GridFTP-WG, DT-RG, GHPN-RG
 - DAIS-WG
 - OGSI-WG, OGSA-WG

- Points of discussion

What is relationship to DAIS file access work? - DAIS deals with
existing file systems, and relates functionality to that.

* Administrative issues

 - Chair
   + Osamu Tatebe <o.tatebe@aist.go.jp>
   + More volunteers needed from US and Europe
 - Secretary
   + Need a volunteer

 - URL   http://phase.hpcc.jp/ggf/gfs-rg/

* Participant Counts

# Participants: 66
Almost all participants of the BoF session supports the formation of
the group.  The participants included co-chairs from DAIS-WG, OREP-WG
and other related groups.  Some of the participants volunteered in
delivering documents that could be used by the group.