File and directory services

随着涉及日常生活方方面面的计算机数量持续快速增长，传统上被称为分布式系统的领域的问题变得越来越重要。特别是协调许多机器的配置、可靠地存储重要数据、确保数据的一致性以及在物理机器老化时更换和更新物理机器等问题需要越来越多的工作。我对分布式系统的文件和目录系统的研究通过发明和改进存储和同步大量数据的技术来解决这些问题。一种被称为虚拟化的老技术最近被重新发现，并被广泛用于帮助管理和保护正在使用的越来越多的计算机。虚拟化会影响计算机存储系统所需的功能以及对这些存储系统的需求，因此我也会关注为虚拟化环境设计和优化的存储系统。在这些环境中，快速创建文件系统副本的能力非常重要，这种能力可以与其他并发写入的副本共享存储资源，但目前的技术不支持这种能力。我将着眼于能够非常有效地提供这种支持的系统结构。

As the number of computers involved in every facet of daily life continues to grow rapidly, the problems in the area traditionally known as distributed systems become increasingly important.  In particular problems such as harmonizing the configurations of many machines, reliably storing important data, ensuring the consistency of that data, and replacing and updating the physical machines as they age take up an increasing amount of effort.  My research into file and directory systems for distributed systems addresses these concerns by inventing and refining techniques for storing and synchronizing vast quantities of data. An old technique called virtualization has recently been rediscovered and is being widely used to help manage and secure the increasingly large number of computers in use.  Virtualization affects the functionality required in computer storage systems as well as the demands placed on these storage systems, and so I am also looking at storage systems that are designed and optimized for virtualized environments.  In these environments the ability to quickly create copies of a file system that can share storage resources with other concurrently written copies is very important but is not supported by current technologies.  I will be looking at system structures that can provide this support very efficiently.