Towards a complete grid filesystem functionality

To be successful the grid must serve a variety of application domains. The data management solutions offered by existing grid middleware have significant shortcomings with respect to the needs of some of these application domains. This paper attributes these shortages to a lack of an underlying grid storage infrastructure, similar to that within an operating system. In an effort to develop this missing infrastructure we have created a relatively complete grid filesystem comprising four abstract engines for directory management, discovery, data movement and consistency. This will facilitate simple data management both within and between grids.