CAREER: Recipe for the Taming of a Chimaera: Toward No-Futz Computing

今天的企业计算环境类似于神话中的嵌合体：它们由从PDA到服务器的各种不同的设备组成，这些设备分别呈现可用数据和服务的不同、零散的视图。雪上加霜的是，设备往往由具有不同兴趣和专业知识的个人管理。因此，这些部分甚至不是由单一的大脑协调的！不出所料，这些怪物很难使用和维护。该项目正在探索驯服这些怪物的两个因素：对等(P2P)文件系统和分散的协调机制。该文件系统用于将设备的零散数据视图统一到全局命名空间中，从而提供与设备无关的名称和内容寻址。在全局视图下，文件系统持续监控设备特征和用户行为，并自动调整数据的复制和放置，以实现指定的可用性和持久性目标。协调机制用于根据明确指定的策略管理分散系统中组件之间的交互。关键的是，这种机制是基于一种本质上分散的系统，称为法律治理的互动(LGI)。这项工作探索了LGI对上述P2P文件系统的适用性，并将所得到的集成系统在罗格斯计算机科学部的计算基础设施中进行了实验使用。该项目的预期结果是演示如何使用P2P技术来构建功能强大、灵活但低Futz的企业计算系统。该项目还将产生两个原型构件，可用于今后对分散系统的调查。

Today's enterprise computing environments resemble the mythological chimaera: they are comprised of heterogeneous devices, ranging from PDAs to servers, which individually presents distinct, fragmented views of available data and services. To exacerbate the problem, devices are often managed by individuals with different interests and expertise. Thus, the parts are not even coordinated by a single brain! Unsurprisingly, these monsters are hard to use and maintain.This project is exploring two ingredients for the taming of these monsters: a peer-to-peer (P2P) file system and a decentralized coordination mechanism. The file system serves to unify the fragmented data views of devices into a global namespace, providing device-independent name and content addressing. Underneath the global view, the file system continually monitors device characteristics and user behaviors, and automatically adapts the replication and placement of data to achieve specified availability and durability targets.The coordination mechanism serves to govern the interactions between components within a decentralized system according to explicitly specified policies. Critically, this mechanism is based on an intrinsically decentralized system called Law Governed Interactions (LGI). This work explores the applicability of LGI to the above P2P file system and the experimental use of the resulting integrated system in the computing infrastructure of the Rutgers Computer Science Department.The expected outcome of the project is a demonstration of how P2P technologies can be used to build powerful and flexible, yet low-futz enterprise computing systems. The project will also produce two prototype building blocks that can be used for future investigations of decentralized systems.