BlockFlex - Enabling Storage Harvesting with Software-Defined Flash in Modern Cloud Platforms

Explore a cutting-edge approach to storage resource optimization in cloud platforms through this 16-minute conference talk from OSDI '22. Dive into BlockFlex, a learning-based storage harvesting framework that maximizes storage utilization while maintaining performance and security isolation between regular and evictable VMs. Learn how researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Microsoft Research rethink storage virtualization abstractions to enable transparent harvesting of both allocated and unallocated storage for evictable VMs. Discover the innovative use of programmable solid-state drives (SSDs) and the application of heuristics and learning-based approaches to address the challenges of space, bandwidth, and data security isolation in storage devices. Gain insights into the potential for significantly improving storage efficiency in modern cloud environments through this presentation of groundbreaking research in software-defined flash technology.