DATE: Thursday, October 2, 2003
TIME: Noon - 1 pm
PLACE: Hamerschlag Hall, D210

SPEAKER:
Andrew Klosterman & John Strunk
CMU

TITLE:
Self-* Storage Systems: Architecture and Organization

ABSTRACT:
We are exploring the architecture and organization of self-* storage systems: self-organizing, self-configuring, self-tuning, self-healing, self-managing systems of storage bricks. Borrowing organizational ideas from corporate structure and automation technologies from AI and control systems, we hope to dramatically reduce the administrative burden faced by data center administrators.

Storage represents 40-60% of hardware costs in modern data centers, and 60-80% of the total cost of ownership. Storage administration (including capacity planning, backup, and load balancing) is where
much of the administrative effort lies. The self-* storage project is exploring ways to automate management of the storage system.

BIO:
In his sixth year at CMU, Andy has participated in three reverse-engineering projects: network switch firmware, face recognition software, and the AFS RPC transport layer (Rx). Last year, he transitioned into "forward-engineering" projects, starting with the Cuckoo NFS load-shedding system. This trend continues with considerations for the design of self-* storage systems.

John Strunk is a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. John received his M.S. from CMU in May of 2000, and a B.Cmp.E. from Georgia Tech in 1998. His research focuses on computer security and intrusion tolerant computer systems. John is a student of Greg Ganger and is currently working on the Self-* Storage project.

For Further Seminar Info:
Visit http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/