Oasa: An Active Storage Architecture for Object-based Storage System

Active storage can largely reduce the network traffic and application execution time. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of an active storage architecture called Oasa for object-based storage system. Compared with previous work, Oasa has the following features.(1) It provides a flexible and efficient way for user to process data. User functions can process data of one user object or multiple objects at a time. (2) Oasa supports multiple patterns of user functions: both the input and output of the functions can a) come from network or disk or b) go to network or disk. (3) It keeps compatible with the current T10 OSD standard and requires little extra modification to execute user functions. Using the extended OSD commands, user can conveniently create, delete, associate and execute user functions with user objects. We also evaluate the performance of Oasa by running a typical application-data selection. It is a representative data analysis application widely used in solving real problems. Experimental results show that when the proposed active storage functions are enabled for object-based storage system, the client can obtain upto 61.9% reduction of application execution time.