Date & Time:
April 19, 2019 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Location:
Crerar 298, 5730 S. Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL,
04/19/2019 02:30 PM 04/19/2019 03:30 PM America/Chicago Ram Kesavan (NetApp) – Problems in Enterprise File System Design Crerar 298, 5730 S. Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL,

Problems in Enterprise File System Design

WAFL is a copy-on-write transactional file system that has evolved from being used primarily for NFS file sharing in the early '90s into an enterprise-grade multi-protocol multi-media storage system with a large number of data management features that support a wide variety of workloads. This talk highlights some elegant designs, practical trade-offs, difficult technical challenges, and future directions in this evolution.

Host: Haryadi Gunawi

Ram Kesavan

Technical Director, NetApp

Ram is a Technical Director in the WAFL File System team. He has worked at NetApp far too long building storage system software. During this time, he has had the good fortune to work in all areas of the file system, such as journaling, write allocation, garbage collection, buffer cache, resiliency, repair, and performance, even as different storage media (SSD, flash, cloud) have been incorporated into WAFL. In the last few years, he has been using his weekends to write and submit papers on WAFL designs to academic conferences. Ram has a PhD from The Ohio State University and a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Related News & Events

headshots
UChicago CS News

University of Chicago Wins Distinguished Laude Institute Moonshots Seed Grant

Apr 15, 2026
collage
UChicago CS News

Incredible Showing of UChicago CS Researchers to CHI 2026

Apr 10, 2026
ai cartoon
UChicago CS News

What If AI Scientists Could Talk to Each Other?

Apr 06, 2026
person using embodied AI to open a window
UChicago CS News

When AI Meets Muscle: Context-Aware Electrical Stimulation Promises a New Way to Guide Human Movements

Apr 03, 2026
graphic
UChicago CS News

UChicago Researchers Build a Tool to Help Fix Peer Review

Apr 02, 2026
iccc team photo
UChicago CS News

UChicago CS Team Qualified for 2026 ICPC World Final Championships in Dubai

Apr 01, 2026
AI wedding photos
UChicago CS News

Mapping the New Rules of “AI Slop”: How Social Media Platforms are Managing AI-Generated Content

Mar 23, 2026
robot
UChicago CS News

How Chicago Robot Tutors Are Teaching SEL Effectively–Without Pretending to Be Human

Mar 19, 2026
screen grab
UChicago CS News

Could AI Help Us Be More Thoughtful Voters?

Mar 17, 2026
nano carbons
In the News

Nanodiamonds and Beyond: Designing Carbon Materials with Artificial Intelligence at Exascale

Mar 16, 2026
headshot
UChicago CS News

Michael Franklin Named Deputy Dean for Computational and Mathematical Sciences

Mar 16, 2026
UChicago CS News

AI Initiative Shares UChicago’s Vision for AI-Empowered Interdisciplinary Research

Mar 16, 2026
arrow-down-largearrow-left-largearrow-right-large-greyarrow-right-large-yellowarrow-right-largearrow-right-smallbutton-arrowclosedocumentfacebookfacet-arrow-down-whitefacet-arrow-downPage 1CheckedCheckedicon-apple-t5backgroundLayer 1icon-google-t5icon-office365-t5icon-outlook-t5backgroundLayer 1icon-outlookcom-t5backgroundLayer 1icon-yahoo-t5backgroundLayer 1internal-yellowinternalintranetlinkedinlinkoutpauseplaypresentationsearch-bluesearchshareslider-arrow-nextslider-arrow-prevtwittervideoyoutube