|
The Advanced Storage Systems department focuses on truly innovative
solutions to enhance the reliability, scalability, security,
performance, manageability and cost effectiveness of storage systems
and controllers.
IBM's storage virtualization product, the
SAN Volume Controller (SVC), started as a research project in this department was
named by IBM as an Outstanding Research Accomplishment for the year 2005.
Our department was also responsible for inventing a new caching technology,
Adaptive Replacement Cache (ARC), which was incorporated in IBM's flagship
enterprise class storage controller, the
IBM DS 8000. This research effort was recognized by IBM
as a Research Accomplishment in the year 2005.
Advanced Storage Systems
The File Systems team explores and develops new technologies in file
systems and facilitates using these technologies in IBM products.
The File Systems team at IBM Almaden Research Center originated
the General Parallel File System (GPFS),
IBM's parallel, shared-disk file system for cluster computers. It is
available on the IBM®  ™ pSeries™ and on Linux
clusters. GPFS is used on many of the largest supercomputers in
the world and is also used in commercial applications such as database,
file serving, digital media and content management. Almaden researchers
play an ongoing role in the evolution and deployment of new GPFS
releases.
We are also working on
File System Federation, which is a standards-based method of
replicating and migrating data among multiple NFS V4 servers, and Scale-out File Serving,
which is software built in IBM's cluster file systems to provide a gateway
solution to broaden the range of environments that can benefit from storage
consolidation and advanced data management.
File Systems
In the day-to-day operation of a data center, a multitude of tasks must be
performed to ensure that storage systems actually deliver the performance
and reliability that
an enterprise expects. While these tasks may seem conceptually simple --
such as giving higher priorities to more important tasks, archiving
little-used data to less-expensive media, or keeping required records
unmodified -- their sheer volume can often overwhelm
an understaffed center or force the hiring of additional highly trained
storage administrators.
We are studying ways to automate many storage management processes
so administrators can concentrate on those tasks for which their skills
are critically required.
An example of a product that addresses these requirements is IBM's
storage management product, the
IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center. Our team contributed significantly to the release of
this product, and continues to deliver advanced storage management functionality to it;
we are also extending some of the technologies used in storage management into the broader area of systems management.
In collaboration with the Almaden Computer Science function, we are doing
research on a next-generation achive solution that improves data accessability
while optimizing data center costs.
We are also focused on working with customers and IBM services in order to
better understand and serve our customers' needs.
Storage Management and Solutions
| 
