MIS Research Center Seminar Series
8:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
1st Floor Auditorium, Carlson School of Management

Abstract:

We are drowning in data - there is no doubt about it. In the past 5 years we have invented more ways to create and store data than have existed in all of history. But due to our very nature we have not figured out how to throw any of this data away. We keep everything! Let's face it, data and stored information are becoming an intricate part of our daily lives and we will have to simply learn to live with it. One significant problem with keeping every bit of data we every came across is how will we ever find anything we need in a day, a week, a month, or a year from now? Furthermore, how do we find anything "inside" the data files? The Google Paradox states that we can find a specific item of information faster on the web using a Google search than we can on our own personal computer! Why is that?

This talk is not only intended to answer that question (answer: "I don't know") but also to describe various dimensions of advances in data storage technologies and how these advances will help with data search and retrieval, hopefully within our lifetime. These technologies include storage media (disk drives, tape drives, flash cards, ...etc.), file systems, protocols, and intelligent storage systems. This talk will take you through advances of each of these technologies and present a vision of where they could lead. It is important to remember, however, that there is a fine line between a "vision" and an "halucination".

Speaker Biography

Tom Ruwart has over 26 years of experience in the computer and storage industry starting in 1977 with Control Data Corporation. His experience spans hardware and software from IBM mainframe disk drives to large supercomputer-class storage systems. Aside from Control Data, Tom has worked for a start-up company, Edge Computer Corporation, The Minnesota Supercomputer Center, the University of Minnesota Laboratory for Computational Science and Engineering, and Ciprico.

Tom is currently at the University of Minnesota's Digital Technology Center (DTC) coordinating the formation of the DTC Intelligent Storage Consortium (DISC) as well as consulting on several large-scale government-funded storage projects. These projects include the NASA Remote Data Store (RDS) – a 5PB long-term archive for satellite image data, the DoE ASCI Lustre Project ( www.lustre.org ), and the Fermi National Accelerator Lab Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) – a high energy physics experiment that will generate 10-30PB/year of dense data. His consulting consists primarily of understanding the architectural, technical, and business issues surrounding the emergene, application, and integration of truly intelligent Object-based Storage Devices (OSD) into these environments. However, he also continues to consult for a variety of organizations and companies on disk I/O and file system performance related issues in theory and in practice. To that end, Tom is the author of the xdd disk I/O performance characterization program used by many companies and academics performing detailed I/O characterization studies.

As part of his work in the storage industry Tom is actively involved in the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Object-based Storage Device (OSD) Technical Working Group (TWG) (previously chaired this group and now chairs the education subgroup for the OSD TWG) and the IEEE Mass Storage Systems Technical Committee (program committee chair for the 2003 IEEE/NASA Mass Storage Symposium). All these activities are focused on driving the research, development, and deployment of intelligent storage technologies, applications, and markets.

In his spare time, Tom writes articles for Computer Technology Review and InfoStor magazines. Tom was on the “ PetaBytes and Beyond ” panel at the File and Storage (FAST) Conference ( www.usenix.org/fast03 ) and spoke at the Spring 2003 Storage Networking World Conference on the topic of “Storage on the Lunatic Fringe” . In May 2003, Tom hosted a workshop on Intelligent Storage at the University of Minnesota Digital Technology Center. Upcoming activities include chairing the Storage on the Lunatic Fringe 1-day workshop at Supercomputing 2003 in Phoenix, participating on the Information Storage Industry Consortium (INSIC) advisory board for Futures in Storage , organizing the next Intelligent Storage Workshop at the University of Minnesota, and working on the organizing team for the next IEEE/NASA Goddard Mass Storage Symposium to be held in the spring of 2004.

Publications

• Thomas M. Ruwart, "The M.A.X. Project - The Maximum Achievable Transfer Rate of a Silicon Graphics Challenge", Army High Performance Computing Research Center, April, 1994
• Hsieh, J., Lin, M., Liu, J. Du, D., Ruwart, T., "Performance of a Mass Storage System for Video-on-Demand", Journal of Parrallel and Distributed Computing 30 (147-167), 1995
• Soltis, S., Ruwart, T.M., O'Keefe, M.T., "The Global File System: A File System for Shared Disk Storage", Fifth NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, September, 1996
• Ruwart, Thomas M., “Storage Systems for Video Servers”, The Laboratory for Computational Science and Engineering, April 1997,.
• Ruwart, Thomas M., “Performance Characteristics of Large and Long Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loops”, Proceedings, 16 th IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage Systems / 7 th NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, March 1999, IEEE Computer Society Press
• Elder, Alex E., Ruwart, Thomas M., “The InTENsity PowerWall: A Case Study for a Shared File System Testing Framework”, Proceedings, 17 th IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage Systems / 8 th NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, March 2000, IEEE Computer Society Press
• Ruwart, Thomas M., “Disk Subsystem Performance Evaluation: From Disk Drives to Storage Area Networks”, Proceedings, 17 th IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage Systems / 8 th NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, March 2000, IEEE Computer Society Press
• Ruwart, Thomas M. “File System Performance Benchmarks – Then, Now, and Tomorrow”, Proceedings, 18 th IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage Systems / 9 th NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, April 2001, IEEE Computer Society Press
• Ruwart, Thomas M. “InfiniBand – a Tutorial”, Proceedings, 18 th IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage Systems / 9 th NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, April 2001, IEEE Computer Society Press
• Ruwart, Thomas M. “Object-based Storage Devices – a Tutorial”, Proceedings, 19 th IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage Systems / 10 th NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, April 2002, IEEE Computer Society Press

Professional Organizations

• Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), Chair the education subgroup of the Object-based Storage Device Technical Work Group
• IEEE Mass Storage Technical Committee Executive Committee
• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Thomas M. Ruwart
Intelligent Storage Consortium
Digital Technology Center
University of Minnesota
tmruwart@dtc.umn.edu