Design of Space Station Era Mass Storage Systems

Abstract

Mass storage systems used in the Space Station era must be able to store, retrieve, process, and distribute data, in near real time, at rates up to 300 Mbps and with fast access storage greater than one terabit. To meet NASA's required speed, capacity, flexibility, and reliability at a reasonable cost, these systems will need to employ modem techniques of data presorting, disk stripping, and parallel redundancy. These systems will, also, have to include special, NASA specific subsystems which pre-process telemetry data in order to reduce direct CPU loading and overall system complexity. Commercial storage systems and components available today do provide the fundamental elements required for the development of such a high performance mass storage system. In particular, new commercial parallel drive array systems and parallel drive controllers provide an opportunity to develop and prototype architectures which are suitable and cost effective for NASA's applications. In addition, by utilizing experienced already gained in the use and application of VLSI technology, various required NASA specific functions can be integrated with these commercial storage components to develop an intelligent mass storage system prototype. This paper describes the architecture, components, and technical approach for such a mass storage system prototype.