Integrated system models for reliable petascale storage systems
Brent B. Welch · 2007
The big challenges facing petascale storage systems are not actually those of performanc or traditional fault tolerance schemes, but instead the challenges stem from the inherent complexity of large distributed systems. The best way to address these problems is to build a system model into the system itself, and have the system continuously monitor its current state as compared with the desired state according to the model. Change is applied to the model first, and then the system strives to achieve the new model. The hard part is defining a good model, building good support for introspection, and exploiting these features in the system design. This paper describes this problem in more detail, explains some of the techniques we have used in building the Panasas distributed storage system, and concludes with a summary of the open problems with building petascale storage systems.