A Jonathan Cook 

A Alexander Wolf 

A Benjamin Zorn 

T The Design of a Simulation System for Persistent Object Storage
Management 

I Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado,
Boulder, Colorado 

R Technical Report CU-CS-647-93 

X Available by anonymous FTP and e-mail from ftp.cs.colorado.edu
in the
   file pubcstechreportszornCU-CS-647-93.ps.Z 

X "Efficient storage management of objects is an important part
of any persistent object system.  Storage management algorithms,
such as those for clustering, caching, and garbage collection,
are often complex, since they must simultaneously satisfy a
number of constraints, including low CPU overhead, minimum space
usage, and low latency.  We have designed a simulation system
that can be used to evaluate a wide variety of such algorithms. 
The system is innovative in that it uses trace-driven simulation
as well as a loosely-coupled architecture that separates out
different aspects of storage management policy, machine hardware,
and simulation control into separate modules. Examples of such
modules are those for storage allocation, object connectivity,
physical characteristics, and cost modeling.  The modules
communicate using message multicast (i.e., selective broadcast). 
This approach supports rapid prototyping and rapid evaluation of
alternative storage management algorithms. "