Unistore: A Unified Storage Architecture for Cloud Computing

Emerging large-scale applications on Cloud computing platform, such as information retrieval, data mining, online business, and social network, are data- rather than computation-intensive. Storage system is one of the most critical components for Cloud computing. The traditional hard disk drives (HDD) are current dominant storage devices in Clouds, but are notorious for long access latency and failure prone. The recently emerged storage class memory (SCM) such as Solid State Drives provides a new promising storage solution of high bandwidth, low latency, and mechanical component free, but with inherent limitations of small capacity, short lifetime, and high cost. This talk will introduce an ongoing effort from Texas Tech University and Nimboxx Inc. of building an innovative unified storage architecture (Unistore) with the co-existence and efficient integration of heterogeneous HDD and SCM devices for Cloud storage systems. We will introduce the Unistore design principle and rationale. We will also discuss the prototyping implementation with newly designed data distribution and placement algorithm. This talk is intended for SNIA/SDC general attendees.