A Study on the Object-based Evolving Storage Systems

Storage management costs now exceed storage hardware costs, and this paper outlines a storage architecture that integrates automated management functions to simplify them. Evolving Storage System (ESS)is the concept of a dynamically balanced and optimized disk-based storage, in which failure component should be replaced immediately by another hot spare component (physical evolving); and the data layout and distribution should be reorganized automati- cally according to the attributes of new components (logical evolving). We also describe the feasible SMART tech- niques toward ESS, including self-securing, self-maintaining, self-adaptive, self-recovering, and self-testing. We be- lieve that it's reasonable for ESS to be object-based internally, aiming better availability and maintainability by intelli- gent storage devices.