CAREER: Study of Scalable, High-Performance Distributed Shared Storage Systems

众所周知，由于CPU和磁盘之间的速度差距越来越大，存储系统正在成为许多高性能应用程序的最大障碍之一。本研究的目标是通过开发和研究新型高性能、可扩展的分布式存储系统来克服传统存储系统的性能限制。该项目的研究将开发高性能分布式存储系统的体系结构，该体系结构可扩展到多个磁盘，具有易于使用的应用程序编程接口和高资源利用率。此外，还将研究能够实现动态负载平衡和性能优化的数据放置算法。为了进一步提高I/O性能，该项目将设计分布式I/O缓存架构，该架构可以显著降低I/O读写成本，并使各种工作负载受益。教育活动将包括：开发新的研究生课程，特别强调计算机体系结构和操作系统之间的密切互动；教授学生论文阅读、批判性分析和演讲技巧；整合研究和教育。

It is well known that storage systems are becoming one of the biggest obstacles for many high-performance applications, due to the ever-widening speed gap between CPU and disks. The goal of this research is to overcome the performance limitation of traditional storage systems by developing and studying novel high performance, scalable, distributed storage systems. The research in this project will develop architectures of high-performance distributed storage systems that are scalable with a number of disks, with easy-to-use Application Programming Interfaces and high resource utilization. Moreover, data placing algorithms, which can perform dynamical load balancing and performance optimization, will be studied. To further improve the I/O performance, the project will design distributed I/O cache architectures that can significantly reduce I/O read and write cost and benefit a wide range of workloads. Educational activities will include: developing new graduate-level courses that emphasize specially on the close interaction between computer architectures and operating systems; teaching paper reading, critical analysis and presentation skills for students; and integrating research and education.