Mass storage technology in networks
Katsunori Ishii, Toru Takeda, Kiyoshi Itao, Reizo Kaneko · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1990
Trends and features of mass storage subsystems in network are surveyed and their key technologies spotlighted. Storage subsystems are becoming increasingly important in new network systems in which communications and data processing are systematically combined. These systems require a new class of high-performance mass-information storage in order to effectively utilize their processing power. The requirements of high transfer rates, high transactional rates and large storage capacities, coupled with high functionality, fault tolerance and flexibility in configuration, are major challenges in storage subsystems. Recent progress in optical disk technology has resulted in improved performance of on-line external memories to optical disk drives, which are competing with mid-range magnetic disks. Optical disks are more effective than magnetic disks in using low-traffic random-access file storing multimedia data that requires large capacity, such as in archive use and in information distribution use by ROM disks. Finally, it demonstrates image coded document file servers for local area network use that employ 130mm rewritable magneto-optical disk subsystems.