NetSolve has collaborated with the Logistical Computing Infrastructure Lab (LoCI) at the University of Tennessee to integrate the distributed storage infrastructure named Internet Backplane Protocol (IBP) into NetSolve. NetSolve has developed a preliminary mechanism where the IBP infrastructure is used as a cache mechanism in cases where the same data has to be communicated multiple times between the NetSolve clients and the servers. In these cases, IBP storage depots are started near the NetSolve server locations where NetSolve problems are solved. The NetSolve user first stores the data to the IBP depots and passes the pointers to the storage locations in the NetSolve calls. The NetSolve server program, after retrieving the IBP pointers from the NetSolve client, retrieves the data from the IBP depots and uses the data for problem solving. The infrastructure is illustrated in the following figure.

Extending the distributed storage infrastructure is planned by utilizing the recently developed exNode infrastructure. This infrastructure helps to avoid specifying the storage location by the end user. Instead, a pool of IBP depots are maintained and the appropriate storage location is automatically chosen by the exNode infrastructure. Logistical computing techniques to integrate the computation by the NetSolve servers and the storage by the distributed storage infrastructure will also be developed.

Researcher: Sathish Vadhiyar ( vss@cs.utk.edu )
Institution: Innovative Computing Laboratory