GFS: Evolution on Fast-forward: A discussion between Kirk McKusick and Sean Quinlan about the origin and evolution of the Google File System

Abstract

During the early stages of development at Google, the initial thinking did not include plans for building a new file system. While work was still being done on one of the earliest versions of the company’s crawl and indexing system, however, it became quite clear to the core engineers that they really had no other choice, and GFS (Google File System) was born.

Index Terms

• Software and its engineering

  • Software organization and properties

    • Contextual software domains

      • Operating systems

        • Memory management

          • Distributed memory

    • Software system structures

      • Distributed systems organizing principles