This course provides a comprehensive examination of both the hardware and software components of modern computer storage systems. We will delve into the layered architecture of contemporary storage systems—from individual disks and disk arrays to distributed storage systems. With a strong focus on efficiency, performance, and reliability, the course will equip you with the skills needed to evaluate, analyze, improve, and design storage systems.
| Week | Date | Speaker | Topic | Course Materials | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026-01-26 | Juncheng Yang | Course overview [slides] | ||
| 1 | 2026-01-28 | Juncheng Yang | Hard Disk Drive [slides] | optional readings data sheet, backblaze, OSTEP, SMR, HAMR, Glass | |
| 2 | 2026-02-02 | Juncheng Yang | Solid-state Drive [slides] | optional readings data sheet, OSTEP, video, design tradeoff, FEMU, contract | |
| 2 | 2026-02-04 | Juncheng Yang | SSD (cont) and Block Storage [slides 1, slides 2] | optional readings Linux, LWN | |
| 3 | 2026-02-09 | Juncheng Yang | File Systems 1 [slides] | optional readings OSTEP, OSTEP2, OSTEP3, vfs | |
| 3 | 2026-02-11 | Juncheng Yang | File Systems 2 [slides] | optional readings OSTEP1, OSTEP2, OSTEP3, FFS, FFS Keynote, LFS, | Presentation Paper Choice Due |
| 4 | 2026-02-16 | No class (University holiday) | |||
| 4 | 2026-02-18 | Juncheng Yang | Distributed Storage Systems 1 [slides] | NFS, AFS, AFS2, OSTEP-NFS, OSTEP-AFS, GFS, HDFS | |
| 5 | 2026-02-23 | Cancell (school shutdown) | Please use time to work on the project proposal. | ||
| 5 | 2026-02-25 | Juncheng Yang | Distributed Storage Systems 2 [slides] | 3FS, EBS, Andy S3, Alibaba EBS, Alibaba Pangu | |
| 5 | 2026-03-02 | Juncheng Yang | Storage performance | ||
| 6 | 2026-03-04 | Juncheng Yang | Software cache | Cache Competition Open | |
| 6 | 2026-03-09 | Juncheng Yang | Storage reliability | ||
| 7 | 2026-03-11 | Juncheng Yang | Data protection and midterm review | Project Proposal Due | |
| 8 | 2026-03-16 | No class (Spring break) | |||
| 8 | 2026-03-18 | No class (Spring break) | |||
| 9 | 2026-03-23 | Midterm Exam | |||
| 9 | 2026-03-25 | Aadit Saluja, Aengus McGuinness; Eric Gong, Mariya Pershyna | Storage hardware: SSD interface | ZNS, SFS, optional readings LightNVM, FDP, contract | Paper discussion class guidance |
| 10 | 2026-03-30 | Jonathan Wu, Howard Huang; Trevor DePodesta, Zani Xu | File systems and I/O path | Arrakis, linux, optional readings metadata, XDP, capacity-variant, cache_ext | |
| 10 | 2026-04-01 | Yunjia Zheng, Fucheng Warren Zhu; Taj Jethwani-Keyser, Joshua Gillett | Hyperscaler storage evolution: disk storage | f4, Tectonic, optional readings Haystack, Tectonic-Shift | Cache Competition Close |
| 11 | 2026-04-06 | Valentin Flunkert (Principal Applied Scientist at AWS) | Guest Lecture: Data science and Machine Learning for large-scale storage systems | Project Midterm Checkpoint Due | |
| 11 | 2026-04-08 | Valerie Chen, Nicholas Yang; Spenser Sun, Cole Harten | Machine Learning for Storage | Learned Index, Learned Index2, optional readings Bourbon, Tracing, LRB | |
| 12 | 2026-04-13 | Wenguang Wang (Distinguished Engineer at Broadcom VMware) | Guest Lecture: Building a Production Storage System in Practice, Design, Algorithms, Code and Beyond | ||
| 12 | 2026-04-15 | Dylan Bruckner, Xuanlin Jiang; Vlad Cainamisir, Minkai Li | Storage for Machine Learning: training data and input pipeline | Data Stall, tf.data, optional readings tf.data service | |
| 13 | 2026-04-20 | Yiyu Liu, Mira Yu; Milad Rezaei Hajidehi, Kitty Wang | Storage for Large Language Models: KV-cache | Mooncake, InfiniGen, optional readings Workload | |
| 13 | 2026-04-22 | Waseem Ahmad | Storage reliability | MTTF, optional readings Failure trend, Flash, Fail Slow | |
| 14 | 2026-04-27 | Project presentation 1 | |||
| 14 | 2026-04-29 | Project presentation 2 | |||
| 15 | 2026-05-04 | Project presentation 3 | Project Final Report Due 2026-05-06 |
