The
complexity of managing storage is growing rapidly as the
storage attached to distributed computing systems gets larger.
This has reached the point where cost of managing a device
is several times the purchase cost, and the planning for
medium-to-large installation can require many months.
Storage
Systems Program in HP Labs has been working on addressing
these issues through the Forum technology. Forum's goals
include the realization of a self-configuring storage system.
The Forum solver (a storage-savvy optimization engine) takes
as input the device and application attributes, as well
as business requirements. It uses these to achieve Quality
of Service objectives as a capacity planning and configuration
tool for storage systems.
I
will describe the key aspects of the Forum architecture
and technologies including: the algorithms that constitute
the Forum solver, the device and workload characterizations
used by the Forum, and the ongoing validation. I will conclude
with a brief description of open issues and future directions.
For
more information: http://www.hpl.hp.com/SSP
