EAGER: Advanced Erasure Coding Technology for Storage Networks

当今爆炸性的数据激增使数据存储成为信息宇宙的中心，但数据中心的规模越来越大，运营成本也越来越高。现有系统严重依赖多个磁盘复制来防止由于设备故障而导致的数据丢失，但消耗多出数倍的存储空间会大幅增加硬件成本，尤其是运营成本（建筑空间、电力、冷却和维护）。本研究计划的目标是开发新的擦除编码技术，以取代简单的复制，实现一个节省空间、节省能源、量化可靠和可扩展的存储系统。其智力价值在于开发一种可行的方法，该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，可以用于构建下一代绿色数据中心，并改造现有的。 虽然擦除编码在节省存储空间方面的好处在理论上已经很好地理解，但是很难设计出好的和实用的擦除码。 PI将通过利用图论、有限几何和组合学来构建新的和最优的纠删码。 这些代码中的一些有可能同时实现理论所承诺的最佳空间效率和最小复杂度。为了使擦除编码高效和可扩展，PI还将通过分层多重保护将单擦除编码的设计扩展到嵌套/分层编码。鉴于能源效率的至关重要性，开发绿色数据中心技术将对科学和更大的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、健康和医疗信息系统、研究资料库和数字图书馆。拟议的研究还整合了一个有意义的教育组成部分，包括工业和国际合作、课程改进和促进本科生和研究生研究。

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.