High Performance Storage System (HPSS) is a flexible, scalable policy-based Hierarchical Storage Management

Hierarchical storage management

Hierarchical storage management is a data storage technique which automatically moves data between high-cost and low-cost storage media. HSM systems exist because high-speed storage devices, such as hard disk drive arrays, are more expensive than slower devices, such as optical discs and magnetic...

 product developed by IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 in collaboration with five DOE

United States Department of Energy

The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...

  National Labs (LLNL

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...

, LANL

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...

, LBNL

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...

, ORNL

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology national laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle. ORNL is the DOE's largest science and energy laboratory. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville...

, SNL

Sandia National Laboratories

The Sandia National Laboratories, managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation , are two major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratories....

). HPSS enables a user to use cluster, LAN, and/or SAN technology to aggregate the capacity and performance of many computers, disks, and tape drives into a single virtual file system.

The 6.2 and 7.1 releases of HPSS have full support on AIX and Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

. The HPSS data mover and client API are supported on AIX, Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, IRIX

IRIX

IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...

, and Solaris.

HPSS supports a variety of methods for accessing and creating data. Among them are support for FTP, parallel FTP, VFS

VFS

The initialism VFS can mean:*Valley Fault System, a dextral strike-slip fault in the Philippines.*Vancouver Film School, a school in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada*Vancouver Film Studios, a film production centre in Vancouver, British Columbia...

 (Linux), as well as a robust client API with support for parallel I/O.

Notable achievements

• Two of the larger HPSS sites, LANL
  Los Alamos National Laboratory
  Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
  
   and LLNL
  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...
  
   had 13 and 11.7 Petabytes of data stored within a single HPSS instance and namespace as of October 13, 2008.
• On November 14, 2007, the San Diego Supercomputer Center
  San Diego Supercomputer Center
  The San Diego Supercomputer Center is an organized research unit of the University of California, San Diego . Physically, SDSC is located on the east end of Eleanor Roosevelt College on the campus of UCSD....
  
   along with IBM
  IBM
  International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
  
  , DataDirect, and Brocade demonstrated a "Billion File" test which successfully backed up a billion files from GPFS into HPSS.HPCWire Nov 15, 2007