Towards a heterogeneous common/shared storage system architecture

Storage management for our scientific, general, and signals processing complexes in the past has been addressed on a system-by-system, complex-by-complex basis. Over the years, the time-phased introduction of a wide variety of heterogeneous computer systems, each of which was selected to solve a unique operational problem, has created a most challenging environment from the storage management perspective. Each processor had its own dedicated storage subsystems, and in the main, its own custom-software solution to its storage management. A walking tour of our major complexes would expose one of almost every type of computer and almost every imaginable data-processing application type, each with its own robotic tape and disk subsystems. Our current challenge is to design and implement a coherent mass storage architecture (across all of the processing complexes) that flexible, repartitionable, and easier to manage. We are in the midst of that challenge now. From the 1970s to the present, our approach to storage has changed considerably, shaped in large measure by the products that have arisen in the commercial marketplace. This paper discusses our corporate adaptation to change and presents our current strategy in this vital area of high-performance/high-capacity computing.