CCR-09/2006/P: dCache, Storm/GPFS and DPM: performance tests, SRM compliance, advanced configuration
Grid storage managers represent a new way to deal with large sets of files in a Grid environment. They are growing quickly, meeting LHC experiment requirements; in particular, nowadays they must honour SC4 requirements as a subset of the whole complete set of features to be implemented for 2008.
The SRM interfaces are needed, both in version 1 and 2, and higher and higher transfer rates (i.e. in SC4, 100MB/sWAN/disk and 1GB/s inside LAN) can't be managed through a classic SE. Possible candidates as SRMstorage managers are dCache, DPM and StoRM.
This work aims to test installation, configuration, features and limits of those storage managers; the resulting overview will be useful both for Tier 2 sites and dCache/DPM developers, and will represent a basis on which to start a regular testing activity about grid storage management.
All the results reported in this note are updated to January 2006. All the software tested is now released in a newer version, with more functionalities added. This work is the result of a working activity born as a requirements of the INFN "Commissione Calcolo e Reti".