Task Force on Network Storage Architecture: Abstracting the storage interface

Garth A. Gibson - School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891

While these serial interconnects will free disk technology from the physical
limitations of SCSI, they will not change the logical interfaces: SCSIUs
abstraction of a drive as a single linear collection of fixed size sectors. In
order to continue to add value through drive-embedded optimizations such as
aggressive prefetching, dynamic allocation, or on-the-fly compression, I
contend that we must develop a higher level, file-oriented,
performance-enabling interface for next-generation storage. Promoting the
drive interface to the level where drive-understood storage objects correspond
closely to the files managed by file system will allow the disk drive to
employ more effective optimizations and self-management within the device,
significantly improving disk drive performance, easing administration,
decoupling the evolution of file system and storage system and lowering the
cost of ownership.