8–12 Apr 2013
The University of Manchester
GB timezone
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StoRM: simplify Grid storage by using WebDAV

10 Apr 2013, 15:00
30m
3.204 (The University of Manchester)

3.204

The University of Manchester

Presentations Community Platforms (Track Lead: P Solagna and M Drescher) Community Platforms

Speaker

Michele Dibenedetto (INFN)

Impact

The adoption of EMI 3 StoRM will bring fresh air to StoRM Grid sites. Both users and site administrators may benefit from the StoRM WebDAV interface. By using http and https protocols a user will browse storage element’s namespace with their web browser, verifying files size, last updated time and checksum from an html page. File transfers will be performed in a single step, even using a Graphical Interface by performing a simple drag-and-drop or cut-and-paste. The chance of federating many storage elements in a single namespace together with the possibility to dynamically add and remove them from the federation, gives to Grid storage a flexibility never seen before.

Summary

StoRM, a storage element solution, is evolving to simplify the traditional approach of Grid users to Grid storage. Currently users interact with the storage by means of the StoRM implementation of the SRM interface. This approach, although it is the standard way to access Grid storage elements, has few considerable drawbacks that can undermine users experience. Amongst those there are the lack of standard GUI clients, the requirement for x.509 proxies and the three steps file transfer workflow. All these disadvantages can frighten new user communities when evaluating the adoption of Grid middleware and its Storage elements. StoRM aims at solving these issues by exposing a WebDAV interface, that comes abreast of the SRM interface.

Description

StoRM is a multi-service middleware component deployed since early 2007to more than 50 data centres around the world, scaling from small to large installations and notably including the INFN Tier-1 at CNAF. StoRM provides a commodity interface for managing storage space and user files, hiding the specific implementation of the storage by exposing a standard SRM 2.2 interface with fine grained authorization mechanisms. The software has been designed around the driving principle of leveraging the advantages of cluster filesystems, such as GPFS and Lustre, and to allow a simple integration with tape management systems like TSM. The result is a lightweight, almost stateless, storage-backend agnostic system. The latest development efforts have been directed toward new user communities and their needs: in the upcoming EMI 3 release, StoRM will provide a brand-new WebDAV interface that will conceal the details of the SRM protocol and will allow users to mount remote Grid storage as a volume on their own desktops. It represents a single entry point to the storage data both for file management and transferring by providing different authentication models (from typical grid x.509 proxies and standard x.509 certificates to anonymous http read access), maintaining at the same time full compliance with present Grid standards. Introducing the chance to aggregate several heterogeneous storage element instances into a WebDAV federation, StoRM is now entering a new phase of its life.

Primary author

Michele Dibenedetto (INFN)

Co-authors

Mrs Cristina Aiftimiei (INFN) Elisabeth Ronchieri (INFN) Mr Enrico Vianello (INFN CNAF) Dr Vincenzo Vagnoni (INFN)

Presentation materials

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