Grains of SANs : Building Storage Area Networks from Memory Spots

Emerging storage platforms, such as HP’s memory spot, are increasingly becoming smaller, faster and less expensive. Whether intended for holding digital media or personal documents, such systems currently function as independent receptacles of data. As we demonstrate in this paper, however, the true power of these devices is their ability to form the flexible building blocks of larger logical storage systems. Such systems allow for the creation of continuously reconfigurable storage devices, capable of the dynamic addition, removal and repurposing of component nodes. Moreover, such changes can be made transparent to the user’s view of the storage system. To illustrate these properties, we design and implement a granular storage system based on memory spots. In so doing, we identify and address significant challenges in areas including organization, security and reliability. We then conduct an extensive analysis of performance and demonstrate the ability to achieve throughputs of greater than 3 Mbps to our unoptimized logical storage device. These results demonstrate the potential for new applications and systems built on granular storage.

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