Reference Model and Storage Consortia

The National Storage Laboratory (NSL) was organized to investigate, demonstrate, and commercialize high-performance hardware and sofnyare storage technologies that promise to remove network computing bottlenecks and to provide critically needed new storage system functionality. This paper briefly outlines the NSL ’s goals, the NSL collaboration, the NSL’s current status and organization, and the applications drive for the NSL. The NSL‘s goals and the NSL collaboration The goals of organizing the National Storage Laboratory (NSL) were to investigate, demonstrate, and commercialize high-performance hardware and software storage technologies that promise to remove network computing bottlenecks and to provide critically needed new storage system functionality [ 1],[2],[3]. This new functionality will help meet the storage requirements of crucial scientific, engineering, industrial, and commercial applications; provide new methods of storage system resource utilization to commercial vendors; provide capabilities needed in the planned United States national information infrastructure; and help guide the efforts of storage system standards groups. 0