Modern operating systems have been designed around the hypotheses that (a) memory is both byte-addressable and volatile and (b) storage is block addressable and persistent. The arrival of new Persistent Memory (PM) technologies, has made these assumptions obsolete. Despite much of the recent work in this space, the need for consistently sharing PM data across multiple applications remains an urgent, unsolved problem. Furthermore, the availability of simple yet powerful operating system support remains elusive. In this dissertation, we propose and build The Region System – a high-performance operating system stack for PM that implements usable consistency and persistence for application data. The region system provides support for consistently mapping and sharing data resident in PM across user application address spaces. The region system creates a novel IPI based PMSYNC operation, which ensures atomic persistence of mapped pages across multiple address spaces. This allows applications to consume PM using the well understood and much desired memory like model with an easy-to-use interface. Next, we propose a metadata structure without any redundant metadata to reduce CPU cache flushes. The high-performance design minimizes the expensive PM ordering and durability operations by embracing a minimalistic approach to metadata construction and management. To strengthen the case for the region system, in this dissertation, we analyze different types of applications to identify their dependence on memory mapped data usage, and propose user level libraries LIBPM-R and LIBPMEMOBJ-R to support shared persistent containers. The user level libraries along with the region system demonstrate a comprehensive end-to-end software stack for consuming the PM devices.

[pt] Os recursos disponíveis neste trabalho são a operação do On Load Tap Changer (OLTC) da subestação, possibilidade de cortes de carga e, finalmente, o dimensionamento e despacho de baterias no sistema. Para uma análise mais realista, é abordada, ainda, uma formulação robusta da incerteza da carga e uma representação dos perfis de consumo através de cenários típicos, estabelecidos por agrupamento de similaridade, utilizando algoritmo de mineração de dados K-Means. O sistema teste modificado IEEE 123 barras é empregado na avaliação da metodologia descrita, e indica a viabilidade operacional e econômica da inserção de dispositivos armazenadores de energia no contexto de proposta do trabalho. / [en] The development of studies related to the power applications and economic feasibility of energy storage resources in electricity distribution networks has become promising considering the reduction in the cost of energy storage. Such technology can minimize the intermittence of renewable sources, provide the displacement of peak loads, extend the expansion of the electricity grid infrastructure, among other benefits. In this sense, this dissertation intends to explore and evaluate an integer-mixed linear optimization model, which is originally non-linear, for the planning and operation of energy storage systems inserted in a distribution system that may present unbalanced loads. The model seeks to minimize operation and investment costs, meeting systemic constraints, coordinating the different resources of a distribution system. The resources available in this work are the operation of the On Load Tap Changer (OLTC) of the substation, the possibility of load cuts and, finally, the sizing and dispatch of batteries in the system. For a more realistic analysis, a robust formulation of the load uncertainty and a representation of consumption profiles through typical scenarios, established by similarity clustering, using K-Means data mining algorithm are also addressed. The modified test system IEEE 123 bus is used in the evaluation of the described methodology and indicates the operational and economic feasibility of inserting energy storage devices in the context of the proposed work.

This report covers the product development process of a C-profile forming a box beam for use in storage systems. The company Brännehylte Lagersystem AB is in need of a new box beam that in pair can handle a maximum load of 4000 kg (four pallets x 1000 kg). At present the company has only one beam capable of a maximum load of 4x800 kg and wants to expand its product range and develop as a company and compete with others in the storage systems market. The first step began with acquiring information on the different beams and how they behave under stress. Then began a combination of brainstorming and brainwriting to generate a number of concepts of how a C-profile could possibly look like. After screening of the different concepts using Gut-feeling method three most appropriate concepts were left and were pitted against each other in a Pugh Matrix to get the best possible C-profile for further development. Calculations and tests were done on the selected concept with a combination of elementary cases and SolidWorks. For the beam to be approved it must meet the EU standard for storage racks. The calculated beam resulted in a working beam in theory, which in turn must be produced to confirm that the theory is true. Because a prototype must be produced in order to confirm the results, then the work cannot be proven in practical example and only be proven in theory.

NAND Flash-based Solid State Disks have many attractive technical merits, such as low power consumption, light weight, shock resistance, sustainability of hotter operation regimes, and extraordinarily high performance for random read access, which makes SSDs immensely popular and be widely employed in different types of environments including portable devices, personal computers, large data centers, and distributed data systems. However, current SSDs still suffer from several critical inherent limitations, such as the inability of in-place-update, asymmetric read and write performance, slow garbage collection processes, limited endurance, and degraded write performance with the adoption of MLC and TLC techniques. To alleviate these limitations, we propose optimizations from both specific outside applications layer and SSDs' internal layer. Since SSDs are good compromise between the performance and price, so SSDs are widely deployed as second layer caches sitting between DRAMs and hard disks to boost the system performance. Due to the special properties of SSDs such as the internal garbage collection processes and limited lifetime, traditional cache devices like DRAM and SRAM based optimizations might not work consistently for SSD-based cache. Therefore, for the outside applications layer, our work focus on integrating the special properties of SSDs into the optimizations of SSD caches. Moreover, our work also involves the alleviation of the increased Flash write latency and ECC complexity due to the adoption of MLC and TLC technologies by analyzing the real work workloads.

Les fournisseurs de services de cloud computing, les réseaux sociaux et les entreprises de gestion des données ont assisté à une augmentation considérable du volume de données qu'ils reçoivent chaque jour. Toutes ces données créent des nouvelles opportunités pour étendre la connaissance humaine dans des domaines comme la santé, l'urbanisme et le comportement humain et permettent d'améliorer les services offerts comme la recherche, la recommandation, et bien d'autres. Ce n'est pas par accident que plusieurs universitaires mais aussi les médias publics se référent à notre époque comme l'époque “Big Data”. Mais ces énormes opportunités ne peuvent être exploitées que grâce à de meilleurs systèmes de gestion de données. D'une part, ces derniers doivent accueillir en toute sécurité ce volume énorme de données et, d'autre part, être capable de les restituer rapidement afin que les applications puissent bénéficier de leur traite- ment. Ce document se concentre sur ces deux défis relatifs aux “Big Data”. Dans notre étude, nous nous concentrons sur le stockage de sauvegarde (i) comme un moyen de protéger les données contre un certain nombre de facteurs qui peuvent les rendre indisponibles et (ii) sur le placement des données sur des systèmes de stockage répartis géographiquement, afin que les temps de latence perçue par l'utilisateur soient minimisés tout en utilisant les ressources de stockage et du réseau efficacement. Tout au long de notre étude, les données sont placées au centre de nos choix de conception dont nous essayons de tirer parti des propriétés de contenu à la fois pour le placement et le stockage efficace. / Cloud service providers, social networks and data-management companies are witnessing a tremendous increase in the amount of data they receive every day. All this data creates new opportunities to expand human knowledge in fields like healthcare and human behavior and improve offered services like search, recommendation, and many others. It is not by accident that many academics but also public media refer to our era as the “Big Data” era. But these huge opportunities come with the requirement for better data management systems that, on one hand, can safely accommodate this huge and constantly increasing volume of data and, on the other, serve them in a timely and useful manner so that applications can benefit from processing them. This document focuses on the above two challenges that come with “Big Data”. In more detail, we study (i) backup storage systems as a means to safeguard data against a number of factors that may render them unavailable and (ii) data placement strategies on geographically distributed storage systems, with the goal to reduce the user perceived latencies and the network and storage resources are efficiently utilized. Throughout our study, data are placed in the centre of our design choices as we try to leverage content properties for both placement and efficient storage.

The fast capacity growth of cheap storage devices presents an ever-growing problem of scale for digital forensic investigations. One aspect of scale problem in the forensic process is the need for new approaches to visually presenting and analyzing large amounts of data. Current generation of tools universally employ three basic GUI components—trees, tables, and viewers—to present all relevant information. This approach is not scalable as increasing the size of the input data leads to a proportional increase in the amount of data presented to the analyst. We present an alternative approach, which leverages data visualization techniques to provide a more intuitive interface to explore the forensic target. We use tree visualization techniques to give the analyst both a high-level view of the file system and an efficient means to drill down into the details. Further, we provide means to search for keywords and filter the data by time period.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related applications of geospatial data were once a small software niche; today nearly all Internet and mobile users utilize some sort of mapping or location-aware software. This widespread use reaches beyond mere consumption of geodata; projects like OpenStreetMap (OSM) represent a new source of geodata production, sometimes dubbed “Volunteered Geographic Information.” The volume of geodata produced and the user demand for geodata will surely continue to grow, so the storage and query techniques for geospatial data must evolve accordingly. This thesis compares three paradigms for systems that manage vector data. Over the past few decades these methodologies have fallen in and out of favor. Today, some are considered new and experimental (distributed), others nearly forgotten (flat file), and others are the workhorse of present-day GIS (relational database). Each is well-suited to some use cases, and poorly-suited to others. This thesis investigates exemplars of each paradigm.

This thesis deals with foldable, portable and eco-friendly textile furnishing for students. Students move quite often and therefore big and heavy furniture is sometimes a problem. In this project prototypes of a hanging sofa called Idle and a hanging storage system called Hang Around are presented. These products can be pulled up to the ceiling when there is no use for them and taken down when needed. The idiom of the products communicates stability and security even though they are suitable for living in motion. The aim has been to create sustainable products that can help to maintain the feeling of home and security in the middle of a hectic and mobile life. The forms of the products and the textile patterns have been developed simultaneously. The inspiration for the pattern design comes from Northern forests. The patterns are digital printed on woollen fabric. The materials and techniques used in this project were chosen because of their limited environmental impacts. Idle and Hang Around are designed to suit the concept house Nestet, which is an eco-friendly exhibition house with solid wood construction. The house, where Idle and Hang Around appear, was built in the centre of Borås in June 2005. / <p>Program: Konstnärligt masterprogram i mode- och textildesign</p><p>Uppsatsnivå: D</p>

Off-grid hybrid renewable energy systems are known as an attractive and sustainable solution for supplying clean electricity to autonomous consumers. Typically, this applies to the communities that are located in remote or islanded areas where it is not cost-effective to extend the grid facilities to these regions. In addition, the use of diesel generators for electricity supply in these remote locations are proven to be uneconomical due to the difficult terrain which translates into high fuel transportation costs. The use of renewable energy sources, coupling with the diesel generator allows for the diesel fuel to be offset. However, to date, a common design standard for the off-grid system has yet to be found and some challenges still exist while attempting to design a reliable system. These include the sizing of hybrid systems, coordination between the operation of dissimilar power generators and the fluctuating load demands, optimal utilisation of the renewable energy resources and identifying the underlying principles which reduce the reliability of the off-grid systems. In order to address these challenges, this research has first endeavoured into developing a sizing algorithm which particularly seeks the optimal size of the batteries and the diesel generator usage. The batteries and diesel generator function in filling the gap between the power generated from the renewable energy resources and the load demand. Thus, the load requirement is also an important factor in determining the cost-effectiveness of the overall system in the long run. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to provide a better understanding of the relationship between the assessed renewable energy resources, the load demand, the storage capacity and the diesel generator fuel usage. The thesis also presents the modelling, simulation and experimental work on the proposed hybrid wind-diesel-battery system. These are being implemented with a full-scale system and they are based on the off-the-shelf components. A novel algorithm to optimise the operation of a diesel generator is also proposed. The steady-state and dynamic analysis of the proposed system are presented, from both simulation and an experimental perspective. Three single-phase grid-forming inverters and a fixed speed wind turbine are used as a platform for case studies. The grid-forming inverters adopt droop control method which allows parallel operation of several grid-forming sources. Droop control-based inverters are known as independent and autonomous due to the elimination of intercommunication links among distributed converters. Moreover, the adopted fixed speed wind turbine employs a squirrel cage induction generator which is well known for its robustness, high reliability, simple operation and low maintenance. The results show a good correlation between the modelling, the experimental measurements, and the field tested results. The final stage of this research explores the effect of tower shadow on off-grid systems. Common tower designs for small wind turbine applications, which are the tubular and the lattice configurations, are considered in this work. They generate dissimilar tower shadow profiles due to the difference in structure. In this research, they are analytically modelled for a wind turbine which is being constructed as a downwind configuration. It is proven that tower shadow indeed brings negative consequence to the system, particularly its influence on battery lifetime within an off-grid system. This detrimental effect occurs when power generation closely matches the load demand. In this situation, small frequent charging and discharging cycles or the so called microcycles, take place. The battery lifetime reduction due to these microcycles has been quantified and it is proven that they are not negligible and should be taken into consideration while designing an off-grid hybrid system.

Les systèmes de stockage actuels font face à une explosion des données à gérer. A l'échelle actuelle, il serait illusoire d'imaginer une unique entité centralisée capable de stocker et de restituer les données de tous ses utilisateurs. Bien que du point de vue de l'utilisateur, le système de stockage apparaît tel un unique interlocuteur, son architecture sous-jacente est nécessairement devenue distribuée. En d'autres termes, le stockage n'est plus assigné à un équipement centralisé, mais est maintenant distribué parmi de multiples entités de stockage indépendantes, connectées via un réseau. Par conséquent, la bande passante inhérente à ce réseau devient une ressource à prendre en compte dans le design d'un système de stockage distribué. En effet, la bande passante d'un système est intrinsèquement une ressource limitée, qui doit être convenablement gérée de manière à éviter toute congestion du système. Cette thèse se propose d'optimiser l'utilisation de la bande passante dans les systèmes de stockage distribués, en limitant l'impact du churn et des défaillances. L'objectif est double, le but est d'une part, de maximiser la bande passante disponible pour les échanges de données, et d'une autre part de réduire la consommation de bande passante inhérente aux opérations de maintenance. Pour ce faire, nous présentons trois contributions distinctes. La première contribution présente une architecture pair-à-pair hybride qui tient compte de la topologie bas-niveau du réseau, c'est à dire la présence de gateways entre les utilisateurs et le système. La seconde contribution propose un mécanisme de timeout adaptatif au niveau utilisateur, basé sur une approche Bayésienne. La troisième contribution décrit un protocole permettant la réparation efficace de données encodées via des codes à effacement. Enfin, cette thèse se conclut sur la possibilité d'utiliser des techniques d'alignement d'interférence, communément utilisées en communication numérique afin d’accroître l'efficacité des protocoles de réparation de données encodées. / Modern storage systems have to face the surge of the amount of data to handle. At the current scale, it would be an illusion to believe that a single centralized storage device is able to store and retrieve all its users' data. While from the user's viewpoint the storage system remains a single interlocutor, its underlying architecture has become necessarily distributed. In others words, storage is no longer assigned to a centralized storage equipment, but is now distributed between multiple independent storage devices, connected via a network. Therefore, when designing networked storage systems, bandwidth should now be taken into account as a critical resource. In fact, the bandwidth of a system is intrinsically a limited resource which should be handled with care to avoid congestion. The focus of this thesis is to optimize the available bandwidth of distributed storage systems, lowering the impact of churn and failures. The objective is twofold, on the one hand the purpose is to increase the available bandwidth for data exchanges and on the other hand, to decrease the amount of bandwidth consumed by maintenance. We present three distinct contributions in this manuscript. The first contribution of this thesis presents an hybrid peer-to-peer architecture taking into account the low level topology of the network i.e., the presence of gateways between the system and the users. The second contribution proposes an adaptive and user-level timeout mechanism, based on a Bayesian approach. The third contribution describes a repair protocol especially designed for erasure-coded stored data. Finally, this thesis concludes on the possibility of employing interference alignment techniques in order to increase the efficiency of repair protocols especially designed for encoded data.