Today's fast-growing data-intensive network services place heavy demands on the backend servers that support them. This paper introduces ISTORE, an intelligent server architecture that couples LEGO-like plug-and-play hardware with software adaptability and continuous monitoring. ISTORE exploits introspection to provide high availability and performance while drastically reducing the cost and complexity of administration. ISTORE provides a generic server platform designed to be specialized to match the exact demands of a specific network service application, providing the benefits of a fully-custom-built server, or appliance, without the complexity of constructing one from scratch. Additionally, once specialized, ISTORE acts dynamically to monitor and adapt to changes in the imposed workload and to unexpected system events such as hardware failure. This adaptability is enabled by a combination of intelligent self-monitoring hardware components and a software extensibility mechanis...
Aaron B. Brown, David L. Oppenheimer, Kimberly Kee