"COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENT BRICKSChallenges,Shmallenges! Ever since the idea was conceived in 1997, one of the bottom-line issues has beencooling. With a cube design, how does IBM intend to cool things down on theinside when things get hot? Air cooling doesn't seem to cut it for a system such asthis one. Instead, there are plans to use a system of pipes that will pump coolwater throughout to carry the heat away. Another important issue remains, aswell: How will the CIBs connect to traditional networks? For this, IBM hasconsidered a handful of designs. In one scenario, a rack-like backplane would risevertically from the center of the pile of bricks. In another scenario, IBM wouldoffer two types of bricks: regular and so-called gateway ports, minus a networkboard. But despite the challenges, Wilke's idea has definitely spawned some interestingtechnologies, most of which haven't yet been used by anyone else. Wilke says,"Brick-based systems are now widely discussed for storage applications, but toour knowledge nobody else is building a highly scalable system incorporating thespecial features of this modular architecture: i.e. wireless capacitive coupling, 3Dstacking of bricks and water-cooling, plus autonomic software to enable adeferred-maintenance/fail-in-place-model." Our technology, Wilke responds, "Yes, if one or more of the following criteria isfulfilled: The company has a datacenter or is short ofimportant and when ease ofmanagement of a storage server is important." Although the CIB systems arepresently only a research project, the concept definitely has the word "promising"written all over it. At this point, it's getting hard to find any companies that areholding candles close enough to melt these candles. DEPT OF IT, PDCE 2009-2010 Page 7 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENT BRICKS 5.CIB SOFTWARE (KYBOS)"Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins." Mies van der Rohe "On restraintin design".DEPT OF IT, PDCE 2009-2010 Page 8 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENT BRICKSKybos technology lowers system cost by decreasing the set of administrative tasks required to make storageavailable to applications. For example, the system we propose doesn't require device-oriented configuration taskssuch as RAID array definition, logical volume definition, SAN port zoning and LUN masking.The model that Kybos proposes is based on the idea of a Storage Virtual Machine (SVM), with properties alongthree dimensions: capacity, performance, and reliability. The Kybos system retains those properties that are set bystorage administrators, places data in SVMs according to rules that have been set for the data and according to therequired performance and reliability goals, and regulates access to the data in SVMs to achieve performance andsecurity goals.DEPT OF IT, PDCE 2009-2010 Page 9 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENT BRICKSThe technology pieces we work on enable the application-oriented management model.The Federation layer is responsible for secure storage and distribution of the system metadata in such a way thatthere are no bottlenecks as the scale of the system grows to thousands of nodes. The Federation layer is alsoresponsible for making decisions on where data is placed or moved to within the set of bricks within the system.The Micro-transaction protocol is responsible for performing distributed updates in the system in a coherent andeasily recoverable fashion. This transaction protocol is used to safely update application data as well as to performmetadata updates for configuration changes such as defining new containers for data, enabling replication orcloning of data, and so on.The Local scheduler in each storage brick is responsible for validating and scheduling application requestsaccording to the goals set for each SVM. Access control security is enforced by the local scheduler. This scheduleris also responsible for regulating the execution of the application requests with reference to the performance goalsset for each of the SVMs that the scheduler sees requests for.DEPT OF IT, PDCE 2009-2010 Page 10 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENT BRICKSMore than half of all families in the United States now have access to the Internet, and manyenterprises are switching from proprietary to Web-based systems. We need to learn how toarchitect systems that reconcile the conflicting requirements of high availability versusengineering pressures of time, cost and shortage of skilled manpower.The Internet itself has demonstrated that it is possible to build highly available systems usingunreliable components. The key to such success is to build large assemblies of simplecomponents and distribute functions in such a way that the failure of even a significant fractionof the components does not destroy the functionality of the overall system.Intelligent Bricks - Hardware (previously referred to as IceCube) is an IBM Research-designedserver architecture that follows these simple principles. It consists of a large, three-dimensionalarray (the "cube") of "bricks" that collectively provide a very high resilience against failure. In astorage server application, each brick contains multiple disks, a processor and networkcommunications hardware. An extremely high-bandwidth, three-dimensional mesh connects thebricks, making the location of data within the cube nearly irrelevant. This allows software toscatter and replicate data over many independent bricks. The scheme provides high assuranceagainst data loss, as well as high performance for large data sets, because subsets of the data canbe retrieved in parallel.A desirable by-product of Intelligent Bricks - Hardware's three-dimensional architecture is veryhigh density, requiring one-tenth of the floorspace of conventional systems that have the samecapacity. In addition, total system power consumption is reduced.DEPT OF IT, PDCE 2009-2010 Page 11 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENT BRICKSManufacturingEstablished in 1971, Delta Refractories,Inc. it have been introduced part of the totalpart of a leading manufacturer/distributorin a wide range of refractory maintenancematerials for the Metals & ChemicalProcess IndustriesDelta is a prominent manufacturerRefractory precast shapes (fired to 850°F)of value is to be introduced the concept ofthe collective intelligent bricks addedfurnace. DistributionDelta supplies literally hundreds ofproprietary shaped & prepackagedrefractory products. Our prepackagedspecialty refractories incorporate the latesttechnologies, such as low cement, ultra-lowcement, enhanced flow, "shotcrete", & trueself-flowing castables. Along withconventional castables, we offer a full lineof ramming mixes, plastics & mortars.Compressed fiber modules, including theThese components include carbon bakeDelta DF™ Modulefurnace refractory components, shroudcanisters, precast shapes including pierburner blocks. We also manufacturestandard & custom fabricated ceramic fibermodules, including bolt-on & bolt-through.DEPT OF IT, PDCE 2009-2010 Page 12 "