memorizes metadata in different disk or volume in layout, so that the continuous file reading and writing is separated with the randomness of metadata. They are not mutually influenced, so as to provide higher IO bandwidth as much as possible. In addition, after separation of data and metadata, data and metadata can be processed independently in different hosts without occupying bandwidth of data channel, which can improve the concurrency of data and metadata to further enhance file system performance. Commercialization A 2006 Gartner publication said: "BWFS, an Internet Protocol (IP) cluster file system (CFS), has moved beyond the research lab and into the commercialization stage, and has now been successfully deployed in various industries including the energy, automotive, military and the media sectors. Its success demonstrates the strengths of China's research institutes in the technology realm, despite their relative lack of commercial experience and investment resources compared to many Western technology providers. Although CFSs are not yet prevalent in the mainstream storage market, for some users who need very high input/output I/O performance — especially leading-edge applications such as oil and gas, biotech and computer-aided design (CAD) — BWFS offers a good price/performance solution. Users should also consider BWFS if looking for a lower-priced CFS. Users that need a more commercialized solution — or that like to have a more “out of box” interface — should consider other vendors such as Panasas, Isilon and Ibrix rather than BWFS." BWFS was developed at the National Research Centers for High Performance Computers of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2007, FalconStor announced a joint venture to sell the software. The joint venture was named Tianjin Zhongke Blue Whale Information Technologies Company, located in Tianjin, China. Venture capital firm VantagePoint Capital also made an investment. It was announced that BWFS would be used for video from a satellite intended to cover the 2008 Summer Olympics. See also List of file systems References Further reading Zhenhan Liu, Xiaoxuan Meng, Lu Xu. Lock management in blue whale file system. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Interaction Sciences: Information Technology, Culture and Human (ICIS 2009) A Storage Slab Allocator for Disk Storage Management in File System[Q]，NAS’09，2009 Lu Xu, Hongyuan Ma, Zhenjun Liu, Huan Zhang, Shuo Feng, Xiaoming Han, "Experiences with Hierarchical Storage Management Support in Blue Whale File System," pdcat, pp. 369–374, 2010 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies, 2010