One approach: traditional NAS
Network-attached storage makes storage devices first-class citizens on the network
- network file server appliances (NetApp, SNAP, ...)
- storage-area networks (CMU NASD, NSIC OOD, ...)
- active disks (CMU, UCSB, Berkeley IDISK)
These approaches primarily target performance scalability
- scalable networks remove bus bandwidth limitations
- migration of layout functionality to storage devices removes overhead of intermediate servers
There are bigger scaling problems than scalable performance!