Instructor:	Dr. Ethan Miller (elm@umbc.edu)
Time:	5:30 - 6:45 PM, Tuesday & Thursday
Room:	ECS 210I (CS Conference Room)
Office hours:	4-5 PM Tue & Thu
Prerequisites:	CMSC 421 (at least one of CMSC 611, 621, or 625 preferred)

Recent news

• 27 Apr 1998: Final papers are due at 6 PM on 19 May 1998 (Tuesday). Late papers will not be accepted. See the end of the presentation schedule for further information.
• 27 Apr 1998: The presentation schedule for final projects has been set up.
• 14 Apr 1998: The papers for this week should now be readable. I don't know why they were previously unreadable, but I was able to view each of them from Netscape after some postprocessing. I apologize for the delay.
• 5 Mar 1998: A new paper has been added to the reading list for distributed file systems.
• 24 Feb 1998: Many of the papers we will read in class will be linked to this page. However, their distribution is restricted; as a result, they will only be available to users who access them from the cs.umbc.edu domain. People who try to access the papers from outside the cs.umbc.edu domain may be denied access.
• 19 Feb 1998: A set of papers is now on reserve in the UMBC library. This is in addition to one set that is available in the bin on my office door. Please be courteous with the set of papers on my door and return them promptly. They have been disappearing lately.

Overview

In this seminar, we will discuss a wide variety of issues regarding file systems and mass storage. Students in the seminar are responsible for reading each paper before the class in which it is discussed, and are expected to participate actively in class discussions. Each paper will be "presented" by someone in the class (student or professor); this person will briefly summarize the key points in the paper and lead the subsequent discussion.

We will cover the following topics during the semester:

1. Introduction to File Systems
   1. History
   2. Background
2. Storage Devices
   1. Disks & disk arrays
   2. Tapes
   3. Benchmarks & performance
3. Modern Uniprocessor File Systems
   1. Disk layout
   2. Caching policies
4. Distributed File Systems
   1. Data distribution
   2. Replication & consistency
5. High-Performance & Parallel File Systems
6. Tertiary Storage & File Migration
7. Storage in a Mobile Environment
8. Extending the File System
9. File Systems for Multimedia

Project

All students in CMSC 791A must complete a project in an area related to file systems & mass storage. Students may work alone or in groups up to 3 people on any storage-related topic of their choosing. There will be regular checkpoints during the semester to ensure that the project remains on schedule to be completed by the beginning of May. Please see the project information page for specific deadlines and more information.

Exams

While I am not scheduling any exams, I may give out a short pop quiz if I find that students have not been reading the papers before coming to class. These quizzes will be short (10 minutes) and should be easy if you've read the material. I'd rather not give out such quizzes, but will do so if many students come to the seminar unprepared on a regular basis.

Grading

Grades in the class will be based on three things: participation in class discussions (40%), and the semester project (60%). Note that your project grade includes a score for your presentation and paper, and is thus not based solely on the quality of the research work that went into the project (though quality of research is a strong consideration as well).

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