CAREER: Flashing Up Data Centers: An Orchestrated Design for Flash-based Distributed Storage Systems

在数据中心大规模部署闪存设备可以极大地提高系统的整体性能，并降低快速增长的管理成本（例如，电源、冷却、人员配备、占地面积）。尽管技术上有很多优点，但这种重大的技术转变从根本上改变了长期以来基于磁盘存储的系统设计假设，并将不可避免地在现实世界的实践中带来重大挑战。例如，闪存空间利用不足会造成巨大的经济损失；设备过早磨损可能导致灾难性的数据损坏；不平衡的系统会带来严重的资源争夺；未优化的应用程序可能无法获得预期的收益；还有其他许多人。该项目旨在解决这些挑战。将进行研究，以开发一种内聚设计方法，以提供精心安排的整个系统优化。通过重新审视整个存储层次，从硬件、操作系统、集群中间件到应用程序，团队将重新设计设备架构，使闪存设备有机地集成为一个巨大的闪存存储系统的组成部分，创建一个基于闪存的分布式存储服务，优化资源利用率，保证数据可靠性。此外，一系列关键的数据中心应用将得到加强，以充分利用闪存技术的巨大潜力。作为CAREER项目的一部分，该团队还将寻求对行业的影响，对课程的贡献，以及向当地代表性不足的学生伸出援手。

A large-scale deployment of flash devices into data centers can greatly improve the overall system performance and reduce the rapidly growing management cost (e.g., power, cooling, staffing, floor space). Despite the technical merits promised, such a grand technical transition fundamentally changes the long-held system design assumption for a disk-based storage and will inevitably bring major critical challenges in a real-world practice. For example, underutilization of flash space would cause huge economic loss; premature device wear-out may result in catastrophic data corruption; unbalanced system could bring severe resource contention; unoptimized applications may not receive anticipated benefits; and many others. This project aims to address these challenges. Research will be conducted to develop a cohesive design approach to providing an orchestrated whole-system optimization. By revisiting the entire storage hierarchy, from hardware, operating system, cluster middleware, to applications, the team will redesign the device architecture to enable an organic integration of flash devices as integral elements in a huge flash storage system, create a flash-based distributed storage service with optimized resource utilization and guaranteed data reliability. Furthermore, a set of key data center applications will be enhanced to fully exploit the great potential of the flash technology. As part of this CAREER project, the team will also seek influence to the industry, contribution to curriculum, and outreach to local area under represented students.