Panasas system storage maker, based in Fremont, Calif, has recently announced that it will open source the code of DirectFlow parallel file system client software. The parallel network file system (pNFS for short) refers to a Panasas technology for improving the customer development of parallel storage solutions and also brings an innovative solution to the so-called storage I/O bottlenecks.

As company officials stated, pNFS is expected to run on Linux, Windows and also UNIX-like versions. According to their statements, they will be open-sourcing the code of DirectFLOW client for Linux, especially to the storage and developer community and also the object layout driver and iSCSI drivers. As it is said on its website, the parallel NFS is an extension to NFS v4 that allows clients to access storage devices directly and in parallel thus eliminating the scalability and performance issues associated with NFS servers in deployment today. This is achieved by the separation of data and metadata, and moving the metadata server out of the data path.

The NFS is said to be one of the best choices when it comes to system storage as it provides many benefits such as interoperability between the vendor solutions or reducing risks of developing proprietary technology.

"Panasas was the first to identify the need for a production-grade, standard parallel file system and has unprecedented experience in deploying commercial parallel storage solutions..." states Robin Harris, senior analyst with Data Mobility Group.

Addison Snell, analyst with Tabor Research, has stated for eWeek: "pNFS is a very significant trend for high-performance computing", and also added: "It will create a standard for scalable cluster file systems. It is certainly complex, but it is being driven out of necessity."

A new protocol, as part of the NFS version 4.1 RFC, will be revised by the IETF NFSv4 subcommittee. The new standard is developed by big players in the storage industry technology of the NFSv4 working group, including Panasas, EMC, Network Appliance, IBM, Sun Microsystems and the University of Michigan's Center for Information Technology Integration.