Distributed storage solutions are almost ubiquitous today. They are used in HPC systems, corporate desktops, corporate laptops, and even typical laptop and home users are starting to use servers to provide centralized storage for their homes and families. The most common file system used in these situations is NFS. It has been in use for many years, comes with virtually every OS, is well understood, and it just works. In addition, it’s the only standard file system. This allows you to use a single central server for many different Operation Systems (OS).
However, NFS is not without it’s limitations. Evgeniy Polyakov, a long time Linux hacker, has recently contributed a new distributed file system, called POHMELFS (Parallel Optimized Host Message Exchange Layered File System). It has appeared in the “chock-full-of-filesystems” kernel version 2.6.30 in the staging area. It is ready for testing and can give you a boost in performance (remember - it’s parallel!). This article will discuss POHMELFS and where it is headed...
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Linux Kernel Development How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It: An August 2009 Update