Semantically-smart disk systems: past, present, and future

ABSTRACT

In this paper we describe research that has been on-going within our group for the past four years on semantically-smart disk systems. A semantically-smart system goes beyond typical block-based storage systems by extracting higher-level information from the stream of traffic to disk; doing so enables new and interesting pieces of functionality to be implemented within low-level storage systems. We first describe the development of our efforts over the past four years, highlighting the key technologies needed to build semantically-smart systems as well as the main weaknesses of our approach. We then discuss future directions in the design and implementation of smarter storage systems.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  E. Data
  E.5 FILES
      Subjects: Organization/structure

Additional Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.3 MEMORY STRUCTURES
      B.3.2 Design Styles
          Subjects: Mass storage (e.g., magnetic, optical, RAID)

  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.2 Information Storage

General Terms:
Design, Management, Performance