CAREER: Interoperation Among Heterogeneous Global-Scale Storage Systems

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

The common theme of promoting storage systems as a discipline distinct from databases, operating systems, and distributed systems unites the research and educational goals of this project. As its own discipline, storage systems will attain prominence in academia commensurate with storage's importance to computing. Storage limits the performance of most applications, holds enterprises' most valuable assets, and consumes the majority of IT dollars spent. Training storage specialists to serve the IT community and creating software to increase the manageability and performance of storage is imperative. The research component of this project addresses the inability of large-scale storage systems to share persistent data. Each global-scale system owns data and isolates that data from unaffiliated computers. This project will develop a syndication protocol that allows storage systems to migrate, share, and replicate data interactively. Syndication is not an access protocol; it does not provide data to users and applications. Rather, syndication enables storage servers and data stores to transfer and share the management of persistent data. Syndication decouples data from software systems, which breaks down the boundaries between access to data on a global scale and access to data anywhere on the globe. The educational component of this project develops a curriculum to train storage systems specialists within an eight course Master's degree. The sequence of courses organizes knowledge specific to the management of persistent data, culling it out of many other disciplines. The curriculum integrates classwork with Internet-based educational software systems that support mobile, ad-hoc, and resource limited classrooms.