Chirp

Chirp is a file system for grid computing. Chirp allows ordinary users to discover, share, and access storage, whether within a single machine room or over a wide area network.

Chirp requires no special privileges. Unlike most standard filesystems or storage services, Chirp does not require root access, kernel changes, special modules, or anything like that. It can be run by ordinary users to export ordinary filesystems on any machine or port that you like.

Chirp is transparent. When used with Parrot, Chirp servers can be transparently attached to existing ordinary applications -- like tcsh, vi, and perl -- without any sort of kernel changes or special privileges. Chirp is designed to give maximum compatibility with standard Unix semantics.

Chirp is easy to deploy. Chirp is designed to be deployed with a minimum of fuss. One simple command starts a Chirp server or a Chirp client. There is no complex configuration, installation, or setup to mess up. It just works. This makes Chirp ideal for on-the-fly storage management in batch computing and grid computing environments.

Documentation

Software and Systems

Publications

Chirp: A Practical Global Filesystem for Cluster and Grid Computing, Douglas Thain, Christopher Moretti, and Jeffrey Hemmes, Journal of Grid Computing, Springer, accepted for publication in 2008. DOI: 10.1007/s10723-008-9100-5. (Preprint Version)
Efficient Access to Many Small Files in a Filesystem for Grid Computing, Douglas Thain and Chris Moretti, IEEE Conference on Grid Computing, September 2007.
Cachable Decentralized Groups for Grid Resource Access Control, Jeffrey Hemmes and Douglas Thain, IEEE Conference on Grid Computing, September 2006.
Operating System Support for Space Allocation in Grid Storage Systems, Douglas Thain, IEEE Conference on Grid Computing, September 2006.
The Consequences of Decentralized Security in a Cooperative Storage System, Douglas Thain, Chris Moretti, Paul Madrid, Phil Snowberger, and Jeff Hemmes, IEEE Workshop on Security in Storage (SISW), San Francisco, December 2005.
Generosity and Gluttony in GEMS: Grid Enabled Molecular Simulations, Justin Wozniak, Paul Brenner, Douglas Thain, Aaron Striegel, and Jesus Izaguirre, in Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing, July 2005.
Identity Boxing: A New Technique for Consistent Global Identity, Douglas Thain, In Proceedings of IEEE/ACM Supercomputing, Nov 2005.
Separating Abstractions from Resources in a Tactical Storage System, Douglas Thain, Sander Klous, Justin Wozniak, Paul Brenner, Aaron Striegel, and Jesus Izaguirre, in Proceedings of IEEE/ACM Supercomputing, Nov 2005.