Speaker: Dr Jiri Schindler When: Friday, Dec 7th, 2007 Time: 2:00pm Where: ECS 243

Abstract:
Network Appliance has been founded 15 years ago, combining (then) a very innovative set of ideas to create an easy to use file server appliance. Over the last fifteen years, the appliance has grown into a scale out clustered system. Although very different architecturally, it is built on the same basic ideas and with very much the same premise - simplicity on the outside and a single system architecture with different access methods (i.e., NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, and FibreChannel) serving different workloads ranging from OLTP and high-performance clustered computing to on-line archives with retention guarantees.

This talk will briefly describe the high level architecture of the current clustered system, called Ontap GX, and how it evolved from a "simple" appliance. It will focus on the unique research challenges in building a system that evolves over time and uses a single operating system environment to serve a variety of workload with different user demands. It will also highlight some of the solutions to these challenges while maintaining the continuity for the existing users and at the same time offer new ideas to sustain the level of innovation that signified the original system.

Biography:
Jiri Schindler is a member of technical staff at the Network Appliance Advanced Technology Group. His research interests include efficient data layouts for leveraging disk drive (and other non-volatile storage device) characteristics and systems performance modeling. He received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003, and M.Eng. from MIT.