Data Placement and Migration Strategies for Virtualised Data Storage Systems

Year upon year the capacity and throughput demands for data storage are increasing. These increases have resulted in higher management overheads. The rise of cloud computing and the push back towards mainframe style centralization brings with it the need for more efficient and intelligent data storage techniques. A significant problem with modern day file systems is that they do not take into account the characteristics of the storage devices they manage. Some storage devices perform more efficiently than others, some more reli-ably and others are simply more space efficient. By considering the charac-teristics of the storage devices and the access patterns of the data operating on them, an informed decision can be made about where space for data should be allocated. These decisions benefit the system threefold; quicker performance, greater reliability and cost saving through space efficiency. This report details the implementation of a simulation intended on ex