Big data applications have imposed unprecedented challenges in data analysis, storage, organization and understanding due to their heterogeneity, volume, complexity, and high velocity. These challenges are for both computer systems researchers who investigate new storage and computational solutions to support fast and reliable access to large datasets and application scientists in various disciplines who exploit these datasets of vital scientific interest for knowledge discovery. Compared to hard disk drives, NAND flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) exhibit better performance, particularly on random workloads. Over the past decade, SSDs have been gaining popularity in massive storage. This trend is attributed to increasing storage density resulting from scaling manufacturing process technology, as well as the employment of multi-level cell (MLC) techniques. However, the deployment of SSDs in enterprise storage systems or data centers is still limited due to SSD endurance and reliability concerns.

In this talk, I will first outline my research in data storage and I/O systems, then discuss the challenges of SSDs in data centers, and present our solutions to high performance and reliable flash storage.

Dr. Xubin He is a Professor and the Graduate Program Director of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is also the Director of the Storage Technology and Architecture Research (STAR) lab. Dr. He received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Rhode Island, USA in 2002 and both his MS and BS degrees in Computer Science from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 1997 and 1995, respectively. His research interests focus on data storage and I/O systems, including big data, cloud storage, Non-Volatile Storage, and scalability for large storage systems. He has published more than 100 refereed articles in prestigious journals such as IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC), ACM Transactions on Storage, and IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), and at various international conferences, including USENIX FAST, USENIX ATC, Eurosys, IEEE/IFIP DSN, IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE IPDPS, MSST, ICPP, MASCOTS, LCN, etc. He is the general co-chair for IEEE NAS’2009, program co-chair for MSST’2010, IEEE NAS’2008 and SNAPI’2007. Dr. He has served as a proposal review panelist for NSF, various chair roles and committee members for many professional conferences in the field. Dr. He was a recipient of the ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award in 2004, the TTU Chapter Sigma Xi Research Award in 2010 and 2005, TTU ECE Most Outstanding Teaching Faculty Award in 2010, and VCU ECE Outstanding Research Faculty in 2015. Dr. He is a principal investigator of multiple research projects totaling more than $3million mainly sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). He holds one U.S. patent. He is a senior member of the IEEE, a member of the IEEE Computer Society and USENIX.