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News
First tutorialWritten on 19.04.26 by Benedikt Schardt The first tutorial will take place on April 24, 2026, in the same room as the lecture: Building E1 1, Seminar Room 106. |
Microsoft Teams for the lectureWritten on 19.04.26 by Benedikt Schardt The Microsoft Teams team for the lecture has been created. Please send an email to Benedikt Schardt if you do not have access yet. |
Lecture Time Update for April 17, 2026Written on 16.04.26 by Benedikt Schardt Please note that tomorrow’s lecture (April 17, 2026) will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. |
Storage Systems
This course on Storage Systems focuses on the design and implementation of persistent storage systems. It begins with an introduction to the fundamental building blocks of modern storage hardware, including magnetic hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs), as well as their organization into RAID systems for reliability and performance. Building on this foundation, the course explores the structure of the Unix/Linux I/O stack and examines how storage is managed across local, networked, and parallel file systems.
The course then delves into advanced techniques used in large-scale storage systems, including key-value stores, persistent memory technologies, and methods for improving efficiency and performance. Topics such as deduplication, delta encoding, secure auditing, and systems like LOCKSS are discussed in the context of real-world applications. The lectures are designed to be self-contained, requiring no additional materials beyond the recommended references, while offering a comprehensive overview of modern storage system design and optimization.
Calendar
The lecture slides are accessible to registered students of this course directly via this LMS. For legal reasons, the literature links are often only accessible from within the network of Saarland University, for example via a VPN. The lectures take place in Building E1 1 in Seminar Room 106
| Date | Time | Topic | Excercise | Literature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10.04.2026 | 8:15 AM | Hard Disk Drives | 1. Excercise Sheet | An introduction to disk drive modeling |
| 17.04.2026 | 8:15 AM | Solid State Drives | 2. Excercise Sheet | |
| 08.05.2026 | 8:15 AM | RAID | ||
| 15.05.2026 | 8:15 AM | Linux IO Stack | ||
| 22.05.2026 | 8:15 AM | Network File Systems | ||
| 29.05.2026 | 8:15 AM | Parallel File Systems and OSDs | ||
| 05.06.2026 | 8:15 AM | LOCKSS | ||
| 12.06.2026 | 8:15 AM | Secure Auditing | ||
| 19.06.2026 | 8:15 AM | Deduplication | ||
| 26.06.2026 | 8:15 AM | Deduplication Analysis | ||
| 03.07.2026 | 8:15 AM | Delta Encoding | ||
| 10.07.2026 | 8:15 AM | Key Value Stores | ||
| 17.07.2026 | 8:15 AM | Persistent Memory |
Exams
A written exam will be held on July 23 from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM in HS001.