Greg Ganger

Carnegie Mellon University
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Collaborative Innovation Center 2208
5000 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 U.S.A

Email: Tel: FAX: WWW: Admin Asst:

+1(412)268-1297 +1(412)268-3010 http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/ Jennifer Engelson, 268-3729

Recent Events \\ Research Interests \\ Teaching \\ Brief Bio \\ Hotlist \\ Publications

Recent Events:

• hmm, I never seem to update this... kids will do that to you, I guess.

• Our storage systems course is being offerred again this term (Spring 2008).

• I've taught 15-712 (graduate OS and Distributed Systems) several times in the last few years.

• William David Ganger was born June 30, 2002. Everyone's doing great, and his older brother Tim is handling it reasonably well too. (How's that for old news?)

• Timothy Jacob Ganger turned eight on March 25, 2008. Wow, he's cute.

• Tim and Will make it tough to keep web pages up to date, but lots of research progress is happening too. Check out my publications page for recent and previous papers.

Research Interests

I have broad research interests in computer systems, including storage/file systems, operating systems, computer security, and distributed systems. Most of my current research explores these topics in the broad context of storage systems within CMU's Parallel Data Lab (PDL), for which I serve as Director.

Together with industry collaborators and other members of CMU's Parallel Data Lab (PDL) and CMU's CyLab, my students and I are currently pursuing several topics of research:

• Self-* Storage Systems, which automate and simplify storage administration in clusters of self-configuring, self-organizing, self-tuning, self-healing, self-managing, etc. storage servers.
• Better Security via Smarter Devices. (which, among other things, includes self-securing storage devices that protect their contents from compromised OSes).
• Survivable distributed storage (PASIS) that provide data availability and security even after some successful breakins.
• Automated database storage management (Fates) that matches data layouts and access patterns to device-specific characteristics to increase performance and predictability.
• Characterization and simulation of storage systems. (Two useful side-effects of this work have been the publicly-available DiskSim storage system simulator and the DIXtrac-enabled database of validated disk parameters for it.)
• Design, implementation and use of Systems of Active Components, including "intelligent" NICs, Active Storage Networks, and Active Disks.

Other recent projects include:

• Extracting and using free bandwidth from busy disks.
• MEMS-based storage devices in computer systems.
• Dynamic function placement for data-intensive cluster computing via the ABACUS runtime system.
• Design and implementation of biometric-enhanced authentication systems.
• Design and implementation of application-level networking.
• Exokernel-based operating systems.
• Improved general-purpose file system support for small file I/O.
• Design, implementation and use of extensible I/O software. (This is, I think, the most interesting subcomponent of extensible operating systems, like exokernel-based systems.)
• Construction of high-performance network servers (e.g., WWW servers).
• Implementation and use of application-controlled storage management.

Teaching

In Spring 2001, Dave Nagle and I created a new storage systems course (18-546). I have taught it again in the Spring terms of 2002 through 2008.

In Fall 2000, I was drafted at the last minute to teach 15-712 (graduate OS and Distributed Systems). It was a lot of fun, and I taught it again in Fall 2001 and Fall 2002.

In Fall term (1999), I created and taught a new graduate course in computer system security .

Brief Bio (in reverse order)

In addition to research and teaching, I enjoy spending time with my wife, Jenny, playing various sports (basketball, in particular), and occasionally sleeping. Of course, with the arrivals of Tim and Will, all of that became irrelevant.

I spent 8/95 thru 11/97 as a postdoc in Frans Kaashoek's research group (PDOS) at the MIT Lab for Computer Science. During that time, I participated in the design and development of the exokernel operating system. I also pursued (with others, of course) a number of specific projects, most of which are mentioned above.

In a previous life (i.e., prior to August 1995), I was a graduate student in Yale Patt's research group in the University of Michigan's Advanced Computer Architecture Lab . Although the group's main focus is on compilation for and implementation of high-performance processors, my research was focused on file systems and storage subsystem architecture.

I earned all of my collegiate degrees (B.S., 1991, M.S., 1993, Ph.D., 1995) from the University of Michigan. I grew up in Michigan (Troy, post-1980) and Northern Ohio (Sylvania, pre-1980).

Greg Ganger 
Email: ganger @ ece . cmu . edu         Carnegie Mellon University, ECE Dept.
Tel: +1(412)268-1297                    CIC 2208
FAX: +1(412)268-3010                    5000 Forbes Ave.
WWW: http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/    Pittsburgh, PA  15213