CSR: Small: Software-defied HDDs: A System-centric Design Framework to Minimize Data Storage Cost for Data Centers

该项目旨在开发能够降低数据中心硬盘驱动器(HDD)成本的存储系统设计技术。基于人们可以通过降低硬盘的存储可靠性来降低硬盘成本的观察，该项目将开发能够在不牺牲整体性能的情况下在数据中心容纳低成本但非常不可靠的硬盘的方法。该项目将结合数据中心和硬盘的独特特征来开发能够最有效地在数据中心容纳非常不可靠的硬盘的跨层设计技术。特别是，该项目将开发跨层设计技术，以实现：(A)混合本地/分布式扇区修复，(B)基于迭代跨层解码的扇区修复，以及(C)可配置的按扇区保护。该项目将进一步研究这些设计技术的集成，并探索涉及的设计权衡。将实施数据中心硬盘模拟器，以支持评估和设计空间探索，并将向研究界公开。该项目可能对提高数据中心海量数据存储的成本效益产生重大影响。该项目的成功可能会导致建立一个更大规模的跨学科研究领域，涵盖数据中心存储系统、文件系统、编码理论、硬盘固件和读取通道，以及硬盘制造。对本科生和研究生的研究培训将解决计算机行业缺乏具有多学科经验的研究人员和工程师的问题。主要成果将是研究论文和数据中心硬盘模拟器。模拟器源代码和相应的文档将保存在GitHub上，任何人都可以在那里获得和检查最新的版本。研究论文将在该项目的网站https://www.ecse.rpi.edu/homepages/tzhang/research.html.上提供。所有结果将在项目完成后至少五年内向公众公布。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The project aims to develop storage system design techniques that can reduce the cost of hard disk drives (HDDs) for data centers. Based upon the observation that one could reduce the HDD cost by relaxing its storage reliability, the project will develop approaches that can accommodate low-cost but very unreliable HDDs in data centers without sacrificing the overall performance.The project will cohesively exploit the unique characteristics of data centers and HDDs to develop cross-layer design techniques that can most effectively embrace very unreliable HDDs in data centers. In particular, the project will develop cross-layer design techniques to achieve: (a) hybrid local/distributed sector repair, (b) iterative cross-layer decoding-based sector repair, and (c) configurable per-sector protection. The project will further investigate the integration of these design techniques and explore the involved design trade-offs. A data center HDD simulator will be implemented to support the evaluations and design space exploration, and will be made publicly available to the research community.The project could have significant impact on improving the cost effectiveness of mass data storage in data centers. The success of the project could lead to establishing a larger-scale inter-disciplinary research area covering data center storage systems, file system, coding theory, HDD firmware and read channel, and HDD manufacturing. The research training to both undergraduate and graduate students will address the concerns of lacking researchers and engineers with multi-disciplinary experience in computer industries. The main results will be research papers and a data center HDD simulator. The simulator source code and the corresponding documentation will be maintained on GitHub, where anyone can obtain and examine the most recent versions. Research papers will be available on the project web site at https://www.ecse.rpi.edu/homepages/tzhang/research.html. All the results will be kept publicly available for at least five years beyond the completion of the project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.