An On-Line Reorganization Framework for SAN File Systems

Overview

While the cost per megabyte of magnetic disk storage is economical, organizations are alarmed by the increasing cost of managing storage. Storage Area Network (SAN) architectures strive to minimize this cost by consolidating storage devices. A SAN is a special-purpose network that interconnects different data storage devices with servers. While there are many definitions for a SAN, there is a general consensus that it provides access at the granularity of a block and is typically used for database applications. This study focuses on SAN switches that include an embedded storage management software in support of virtualization. The paper describes an On-line Re-organization Environment, ORE that controls the placement of data to improve the average response time of the system.