Distributed Information Storage Architecture

The authors describe the Distributed Information Storage Architecture (DISA) defined and prototyped at Hewlett-Packard by the Networked Systems Architecture organization. In the first phase of the project, an architecture framework was defined that isolated storage-management functions from database and file-management systems. The idea was to identify and encapsulate functions related to the persistent characteristics of stored data. Only functions common to a large variety of database and file-management systems were of interest. The intent was to build a new storage-management base without altering file or database systems. To validate this idea, a storage-management prototype called StoragePlus was built. The StoragePlus prototype automated several storage-management and administration functions currently done manually. It also demonstrated how one could reduce and control storage administrative costs by doing central administration of distributed storage across a network.<>