User Interfaces

HPSS Storage Broker is used to store, protect, and error correct project datasets across a wide variety of archive storage including public and private S3 object stores, file systems and HPSS. The limited availability release of HPSS Storage Broker was provided to HPSS customers upon request in 4Q 2020, and will be made generally available in 3Q 2021.

SwiftOnHPSS for OpenStack Swift is an S3 interface for HPSS that supports automatic class of service (COS) selection, automatic HPSS end-to-end data integrity support with OpenStack Swift md5 object checks ums, and shared access of Swift objects by other HPSS interfaces.

Intended for HPC use, HPSS can be coupled with Spectrum Scale (previously named GPFS) to automatically: copy files from Spectrum Scale to HPSS; purge Spectrum Scale files that are not being used when space thresholds are reached; recall files from HPSS when accessed by Spectrum Scale users; and save a point-in-time snapshot of Spectrum Scale. HPSS for Spectrum Scale allows multiple Spectrum Scale file syste ms to be managed by a single HPSS.

Linux applications benefit from a near-POSIX standard read-write file system interface. This interface enables HPSS to be mounted as a Linux file system in user space (Fuse). Customers are using HPSSFS Fuse with Open SSL (encrypted file transfer solution), MinIO (S3 object storage solution), OpenStack (object storage solution), SaMBa (MS Windows file sharing), NFS (POSIX file sharing), DSpace (restful open di gital repository solution), and Bacula (site backup solutions).

The high performance Parallel FTP (PFTP) interface moves files in and out of HPSS at high data rates. Standard FTP and high-performance parallel FTP commands are both supported.

The Hierarchical Storage Interface (HSI) provides a familiar UNIX shell-style interface for managing and transferring files. HPSS parallel file transfers are done automatically. HTAR is a utility for storing groups of files using the POSIX TAR specification and a high performance multithreaded buffering scheme to transfer files directly to and from HPSS. Online documentation for HSI and HTAR is found here.