Tiger Shark - A scalable file system for multimedia

Tiger Shark is a scalable, parallel file system designed to support interactive multimedia applications, particularly large-scale ones such as interactive television (ITV). Tiger Shark runs under the IBM AIX® operating system, on machines ranging from RS/6000TM desktop workstations to the SP2® parallel supercomputer. In addition to supporting continuous-time data, Tiger Shark provides scalability, high availability, and on-line system management, all of which are crucial in large-scale video servers. These latter features also enable Tiger Shark to support nonmultimedia uses, such as scientific computing, data mining, digital library, and scalable network file servers. Tiger Shark has been employed in a number of customer ITV trials. On the basis of experience obtained from these trials, Tiger Shark has recently been released in several IBM video-server products. This paper describes the architecture and implementation of Tiger Shark, discusses the experience gained from trials, and compares Tiger Shark to other scalable video servers.

[1]  Harrick M. Vin,et al.  Design and performance tradeoffs in clustered video servers , 1996, Proceedings of the Third IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems.

[2]  James W. Layland,et al.  Scheduling Algorithms for Multiprogramming in a Hard-Real-Time Environment , 1989, JACM.

[3]  Roger L. Haskin,et al.  A system for the delivery of interactive television programming , 1995, Digest of Papers. COMPCON'95. Technologies for the Information Superhighway.

[4]  Danny Dolev,et al.  Fault-tolerant clock synchronization , 1984, PODC '84.

[5]  Daniel M. Dias,et al.  A scalable and highly available web server , 1996, COMPCON '96. Technologies for the Information Superhighway Digest of Papers.

[6]  Jiawei Han,et al.  Multimedia network file servers: Multichannel delay-sensitive data retrieval , 1994, MULTIMEDIA '93.

[7]  Chung Laung Liu,et al.  Scheduling Algorithms for Multiprogramming in a Hard-Real-Time Environment , 1989, JACM.

[8]  Dror G. Feitelson,et al.  The Vesta parallel file system , 1996, TOCS.

[9]  Jim Gray,et al.  Notes on Data Base Operating Systems , 1978, Advanced Course: Operating Systems.

[10]  Jim Gemmell,et al.  Multimedia Network File Servers: Multi-Channel Delay Sensitive Data Retrieval , 1993, ACM Multimedia.

[11]  A. L. Narasimha Reddy,et al.  I/O issues in a multimedia system , 1994, Computer.

[12]  Yasuo Asakawa,et al.  Design of a video-server complex for interactive television , 1998, IBM J. Res. Dev..

[13]  Michael B. Jones,et al.  The Tiger Video Fileserver , 1996 .

[14]  Peter B. Galvin,et al.  Operating System Concepts, 4th Ed. , 1993 .

[15]  Ronald Fagin,et al.  Extendible hashing—a fast access method for dynamic files , 1979, ACM Trans. Database Syst..

[16]  A. L. Narasimha Reddy,et al.  Disk scheduling in a multimedia I/O system , 1993, MULTIMEDIA '93.

[17]  R. L. Haskin,et al.  The Shark continuous-media file server , 1993, Digest of Papers. Compcon Spring.

[18]  Maurice J. Bach.  The Design of the UNIX Operating System , 1986 .

[19]  Murthy V. Devarakonda,et al.  Distributed token management in Calypso file system , 1994, Proceedings of 1994 6th IEEE Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing.

[20]  Flaviu Cristian,et al.  Understanding fault-tolerant distributed systems , 1991, CACM.

[21]  Henning Schulzrinne,et al.  RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications , 1996, RFC.