DATE: Thursday, September 23, 2004
TIME: Noon - 1 pm
PLACE: Wean Hall 8220

SPEAKER:
Michael Abd-El-Malek
CMU

TITLE:
A Protocol for a Decentralized, Scalable, Fault-Tolerant Metadata Service

ABSTRACT:
Motivated by the need for a scalable, Byzantine-tolerant metadata service in the PASIS storage system, we have developed an efficient protocol for implementing shared objects: the query/update (Q/U) protocol. The Q/U protocol is efficient due to its optimistic nature and the use of lightweight cryptography (hashes and authenticators). The Q/U protocol is scalable because it is decentralized (i.e., can take advantage of quorum systems). The Q/U protocol can be used to implement objects that export any deterministic operations. Moreover, operations can span multiple Q/U objects. We have used the Q/U protocol to build the PASIS metadata service. We will present results that demonstrate the scalability and efficiency of the PASIS metadata service.

BIO:
Michael Abd-El-Malek is a second year graduate student at Carnegie Mellon's Parallel Data Lab, working under Greg Ganger and Mike Reiter. His research interests lie in distributed storage systems, and he's currently involved in the PASIS and Self-* Storage projects. Mike received his BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

 

SDI / LCS Seminar Questions?
Karen Lindenfelser, 86716, or visit www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/