How FAST is your Storage?
USENIX puts on a storage conference every year called FAST: File and Storage Technologies. Sun is a Platinum sponsor this year and is holding its semi-annual OpenSolaris Storage Summit on Monday. The summit is free and is being held at the same hotel (San Francisco Grand Hyatt) as the FAST conference. There is a wiki that you can edit to register for the summit, and use to find out more about the event.
The FAST conference itself is a great place to find out the latest research from the academic side of the storage industry. I plan to attend the technical sessions. One presentation in particular I am interested in is on Thursday. Brandon Salmon is talking about a system he helped design that manages all the data on your devices (laptops, desktops, PDAs, Phones) and controls the redundancy and location of that data based on how much you value it (or fear it's loss). I met Brandon at the annual Parallel Data Lab (PDL) retreat put on by CMU. Sun is also a sponsor of PDL.
I will be involved in a couple of Birds of Feather session during FAST. On Wednesday night, you can find me at the Open Storage BOF, where we will discuss the use of open source software to create storage solutions. Thursday night I'll be leading a BOF on Cloud Storage, a trend that seems to be getting some traction lately. There is some interest in creating standard APIs for this type of storage, while others feel that standards at this early stage might stifle innovation. Should be an interesting discussion. Hope to see you there.
