UnifyFS: A User-Level File System for Supercomputers

Node-local storage is becoming an indispensable hardware resource on large-scale supercomputers to buffer the bursty I/O from scientific applications. However, there is a lack of software support for node-local storage to be used efficiently by applications that use shared files.

UnifyFS is an ephemeral, user-level file system under active development. UnifyFS addresses a major usability factor of current and future systems because it enables applications to gain performance advantages from distributed storage devices on the system while being as easy to use as a center-wide parallel file system.

Documentation

UnifyFS documentation is at https://unifyfs.readthedocs.io.

For instructions on how to build and install UnifyFS, see Build UnifyFS.

Build Status

Status of UnifyFS development branch (dev):

UnifyFS Citation

We recommend that you use this citation for UnifyFS:

• Michael Brim, Adam Moody, Seung-Hwan Lim, Ross Miller, Swen Boehm, Cameron Stanavige, Kathryn Mohror, Sarp Oral, “UnifyFS: A User-level Shared File System for Unified Access to Distributed Local Storage,” 37th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2023), St. Petersburg, FL, May 2023.

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