EAGER: Advanced Erasure Coding Technology for Storage Networks

如今，爆炸性的数据激增将数据存储置于信息宇宙的中心，但数据中心正变得越来越庞大，运营成本也越来越高。现有系统严重依赖多磁盘复制来防止设备故障导致的数据丢失，但是消耗多倍的存储空间会大大增加硬件成本，特别是操作成本（建筑空间、电力、冷却和维护）。本研究项目的目标是开发新的擦除编码技术，以取代简单的复制，实现空间高效，节能，可量化可靠，可大规模扩展的存储系统。智力上的优点在于开发了一种可行的方法，这种方法依赖于分布在存储磁盘和节点上的高效擦除码的强度，可用于构建下一代绿色数据中心，并改造现有的数据中心。虽然擦除编码在节省存储空间方面的好处在理论上得到了很好的理解，但良好和实用的擦除编码很难设计。PI将利用图论、有限几何和组合学建立新的、最优的擦除代码。其中一些代码具有同时实现理论所承诺的最佳空间效率和最小复杂性的潜力。为了提高擦除编码的效率和可扩展性，PI还将通过分层多重保护将单个擦除编码的设计扩展到嵌套/分层编码。鉴于能源效率的重要性，发展绿色数据中心技术将对科学和社会产生深远的影响。潜在的应用范围很广，包括数据库、金融信息系统、卫生和医疗信息系统、研究库和数字图书馆。拟议的研究也整合了有意义的教育组成部分，包括工业和国际合作，课程改进，以及促进本科生和研究生的研究。

Today's explosive data surge puts data storage at the center of the information universe, but data centers are becoming increasingly massive and expensive to operate. Existing systems rely heavily on multiple disk replication to guard against data loss due to device failure, but consuming multiple times more storage space drastically increases the cost for hardware, and especially the cost to operate (building space, power, cooling, and maintenance). The goal of this research project is to develop new erasure coding technology, in lieu of simple replication, to realize a space-efficient, energy-efficient, quantifiably-reliable, and massively-scalable storage systems.The intellectual merit lies in the development of a feasible approach that relies on the strength of efficient erasure codes distributed across the storage disks and nodes that can be used to build next-generation green data centers, and to transform existing ones. While the benefits of erasure coding in saving storage space is well understood in theory, good and practical erasure codes are hard to design. The PI will build new and optimal erasure codes by exploiting graph theory, finite geometry and combinatorics. Some of these codes have the potential to simultaneously achieve the optimal space efficiency and the minimum complexity promised by the theory. To make erasure-coding efficient and scalable, the PI will also extend the design of single erasure coding to nested/layered coding through hierarchical multiple protection. In view of the critical importance of energy efficiency, developing green data center technologies will have profound impacts scientifically and to the larger society. The potential application line is broad, including databases, financial information systems, health and medical information systems, research depositories, and digital libraries.The proposed research also integrates a meaningful education component, including industrial and international collaboration, curriculum enhancement, and promoting undergraduate and graduate research.