An Analysis Workflow-Aware Storage System for Multi-Core Active Flash Arrays

Abstract

The need for novel data analysis is urgent in the face of a data deluge from modern applications. Traditional approaches to data analysis incur significant data movement costs, moving data back and forth between the storage system and the processor. Emerging Active Flash devices enable processing on the flash, where the data already resides. An array of such Active Flash devices allows us to revisit how analysis workflows interact with storage systems. By seamlessly blending together the flash storage and data analysis, we create an analysis workflow-aware storage system, AnalyzeThis. Our guiding principle is that analysis-awareness be deeply ingrained in each and every layer of the storage, elevating data analyses as first-class citizens, and transforming AnalyzeThis into a potent analytics-aware appliance. To evaluate the AnalyzeThis system, we have adopted both emulation and simulation approaches. In particular, we have evaluated AnalyzeThis by implementing the AnalyzeThis storage system on top of the Active Flash Array's emulation platform. We have also implemented an event-driven AnalyzeThis simulator, called AnalyzeThisSim, which allows us to address the limitations of the emulation platform, e.g., performance impact of using multi-core SSDs. The results from our emulation and simulation platforms indicate that AnalyzeThis is a viable approach for expediting workflow execution and minimizing data movement.