Computer Science Department,
University of Crete
HY-590.45.
Modern Topics in Scalable Storage Systems
info |
readings |
syllabus |
other resources
Course Staff
| Name |
Email |
Office Hours |
| Instructor: Kostas Magoutis |
hy590-45@csd |
By appt./E-306 |
| Teaching Assistant: Efthymios Papageorgiou |
hy590-45@csd |
By appt. |
General Information
The course meets on Mon 11-1pm, Fri 11-1pm in E.313 (3rd floor of CSD building). Exceptionally, in certain weeks we will be meeting on Wed 5-7pm in E.313 (in those occasions, you will be notified upfront).
Announcements
16.3.2026: Friday 20/3 class will start 12pm sharp.
16.3.2026: There will be no makeup class on Wednesday 18/3
4.3.2026: Friday 6/3 class with run 12-1pm.
15.2.2026: The list of available papers for your presentations is available here
13.2.2026: To sign-up with the hy590-45@list.csd.uoc.gr mailing list please follow these instructions
26.1.2026: We will be using the AWS Academy cloud platform for course assignments, you may find our course page here
12.1.2026: The course will start on Mon 9/2
1.1.2026: You are welcome to get in touch with the instructor to discuss course-related issues
Course Description
The explosive growth of information processing
services in recent years has created an
unprecedented need for storage capacity.
Scalable access to storage resources requires
a class of distributed systems designed for
fast, reliable, and uninterrupted access to storage media
(e.g., magnetic disks and tapes) over high-speed
networks. This course offers an
introduction to scalable storage systems and examines existing design
techniques as well as current research problems in the
design and implementation of such systems, along with
and sharing of distributed storage resources. A number of
challenges, however, are facing the scalable storage
systems architect:
First, it is the higher complexity (compared to direct-attached
storage) due to the distributed nature of the scalable storage
system. Administration, capacity planning, configuration,
backup, and disaster recovery are complicated in large-scale
scalable storage systems. Second, transferring data over the
network requires stronger security and safety guarantees than
when transferring them on the system I/O bus. In addition, it
sometimes requires new, storage-specific network transport
protocols. These and other challenges make scalable storage an
exciting research area that has made significant advances in
recent years.
The core part of the course focuses on the study of
scalable storage systems with special emphasis on
architectures, design principles for scalable performance,
reliability, and availability, the management of data
during their lifecycle, application-specific design
concepts, ways to reduce implementation cost, storage
system capacity planning, and storage outsourcing services.
This course is targeted for graduate students and advanced
undergraduates and requires the undertaking of a research
project. The topics of the
research projects will be chosen with the help and guidance of the
course staff.
Coursework
- Reading and discussing classic and current papers
- Review and presentation of two research papers
- A research project of your choice
Recommended background
- Introductory operating systems and database courses such as
HY-345 and
HY-360
- Solid understanding of the function and operation of the
file, disk, and network I/O subsystems in modern UNIX systems.
Grading
The final grade depends on class participation, presentation of two research papers, and a research project.
Readings
There are a number of paper readings that are
available online. You are expected to read
the papers before the beginning of each class.
There is no required textbook for this class. The following textbooks,
however, are recommended readings:
Syllabus
| Date |
Topic |
Readings, notes
|
| Mon 9/2
|
Course overview
|
-
|
| Fri 13/2
|
Background I
|
-
|
| Mon 16/2
|
Background II
|
-
|
| Fri 20/2
|
Background III
|
-
|
| Fri 27/2
|
Transaction basics
|
Gray: The transaction concept: Virtues and limitations
|
| Mon 2/3
|
Distributed coordination
|
Ongaro: In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm
|
| Fri 6/3
|
Raft (contd.)
|
Visualization
|
| Mon 9/3
|
Extending file systems over the network
|
Sandberg: Design and implementation of the Sun Network Filesystem
|
Fri 13/3
|
NFS (contd.), leases
|
Macklem: Not Quite NFS, Soft Cache Consistency for NFS
|
| Mon 16/3
|
Distributed virtual disks
|
Lee: Petal: Distributed virtual disks
|
| Fri 20/3
|
Presentations I
|
1430
|
| Mon 23/3
|
Presentations I
|
1437, 1453, 1459
|
| Fri 27/3
|
Presentations I
|
1467, 1468, 1476
|
| Mon 30/3
|
Presentations I (Project proposals due)
|
1478, 1483, 1490
|
| Wed 1/4 5pm
|
Presentations I
|
1429, 1492, 1434
|
| Fri 3/4
|
Presentations I
|
1458, 1495, 6079
|
| Mon 6/4 - Fri 17/4
|
Easter recess
|
-
|
| Mon 20/4
|
Distributed file systems I
|
Thekkath: Frangipani: A Scalable Distributed File System
|
| Fri 24/4
|
Frangipani (contd.)
|
-
|
| Mon 27/4
|
Distributed file systems II
|
Ghemawat: The Google File System
|
| Fri 1/5
|
University holiday, no class
|
-
|
| Mon 4/5
|
Google File System (contd.)
|
Lecture slides
|
| Fri 8/5
|
Tutorial on AWS Academy Learner Lab (TA)
|
-
|
| Mon 11/5
|
Presentations II
|
1429, 1430, 1434
|
| Wed 13/5 5pm
|
Presentations II
|
1437, 1453, 1458
|
| Fri 15/5
|
Presentations II
|
1459, 1467, 1468
|
| Mon 18/5
|
Presentations II
|
1476, 1478, 1483
|
| Wed 20/5 5pm
|
Presentations II
|
1490, 1492, 1495
|
| Fri 22/5
|
Presentations II
|
6079
|
Projects HOWTO
Please note the following project guidelines:
- Discuss project ideas with course staff
- Prepare a short desription (abstract) of your goals and deliverables by Wed 1/4 11:59pm
In preparing your abstract, describe
- The system you will be evaluating (artifacts, experiments)
- Expected outputs (e.g., experiments to focus on, type of deployments on AWS Academy, etc.)
- Project reports (in the ACM paper formatting templates) are due June 30
- Prepare a "rapid fire" (10min, up to 6 slides) presentation of your key results
- As part of your submission, please include a video of your presentation
- You may use this presentation template
Other Resources / Useful links