The DAFS protocol is a new file-access protocol designed to take advantage of emerging RDMA (remote direct memory access) interconnect technologies such as InfiniBand, VI and iWARP. The protocol will dramatically enhance the performance, reliability and scalability of web farm, compute farm, e-commerce and database applications in data center environments.

The DAFS protocol was created by the DAFS Collaborative—a group of more than 85 companies. The DAFS protocol specification v1.0 was completed in September 2001, and submitted to the IETF as an Internet Draft. The DAFS API specification v1.0 was completed in November 2001. This completed the mission of the DAFS Collaborative.

DAFS-related industry initiatives are continuing in the DAT Collaborative (defining RDMA Transport APIs), and the DAFS Implementers Forum in the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). The charter of the DAFS Implementers Forum is to advance the development, delivery and promotion of interoperable DAFS storage networking solutions.

DAFS News

• February 2002 - Fujitsu PST Ltd demonstrates DAFS implementation on an InfiniBand-connected Linux cluster at Intel Developer Forum
• March 2002 - Fujitsu-Siemens, Network Appliance, Sybase and Emulex set new Transaction Processing performance record with DAFS solution
• April 2002 - Network Appliance announces DAFS Database Accelerator