Parallel File System

Sun HPC ClusterTools's Parallel File System (PFS) component provides high-performance file I/O for multiprocess applications running in a cluster-based, distributed-memory environment.

PFS file s closely resemble UFS file s, but provide significantly higher file I/O performance by striping files across multiple PFS I/O server nodes. This means the time required to read or write a PFS file can be reduced by an amount roughly proportional to the number of file server nodes in the PFS file .

PFS is optimized for the large files and complex data access patterns that are characteristic of parallel scientific applications.