Software Architect / Inventor

Lloyd Alan Poston

*** ****** *****

Tracy, CA *5376

Cell/Message – 209-***-****

*********.***@*****.***

Summary

Extensive HPC storage systems architecture and implementation experience including Lustre, Spectrum Scale, and Raid / Erasure code, shared NVMe, HSM. Patents in the area of RAID reconstruction and de-duplication.

Skills

Computer Architecture, HPC storage systems.

Highlights of Major Accomplishments

As the lead and architect for a small team at SGI/HPE, I created a unique Zero Copy Architecture (ZCA) which allowed any number of hosts to share NVMe endpoints over a PCIe fabric using unique capabilities of the Broadcom Capella-2 PCIe switch. This architecture also allowed for true third party transfers directly to or from the endpoint into host memory without requiring the host to manage the transfer. This was in support of the SGI/HPE “Tier Zero” storage architecture.

Created ClusterStor for Xyratex in 2010 until 2016. I was one of the founding team of 4 that laid out what was to be “ClusterStor”. I was hired as the OS architect but my duties expanded to hardware selection and the selection of the operating system and, finally, the selection of MDRAID, including major upgrades to the stability and recovery of MDRAID. Later promoted to Chief Architect, I had overall responsibility for the product, including the command and control system, integration with enclosure management, major improvements in the RAS portions of the product. I also was the primary architect of the GPFS (Spectrum Scale) version of ClusterStor, layering GPFS on top of the infrastructure already in place to support Lustre.

After acquisition by Seagate I was promoted again to Technical Director and expanded my responsibilities to include doing technical evaluations of potential corporate acquisitions. I was one of 4 people on this critical team doing technical evaluations of potential multi-hundred million-dollar acquisitions. I was also a member of the Seagate IP technical committee. I was the author of one patent related to ClusterStor GridRAID.

Created a unique continuous remote backup product and remote replication product, 3 patents awarded (US patent # 09/588,242). The remote backup service incorporated a layered virtualization of underlying storage or storage services such as volume management software in a transparent fashion. This was for my own startup company, Total Archive. Total Archive merged with Sanlight where I became the CTO of a 40 person firm. That was in turn sold to Quantum Corporation in 2005.

Created the first RAID-5 disk striping implementation while at the NASA Ames Research Center (working closely with the Berkeley RAID group). Directed NASA funding of the Berkeley RAID project.

Designed and implemented a High Performance Unix File System at Nasa Ames Research Center. The file system included RAID-5, redundancy, fast recovery and safety features, hierarchical storage, and no size limitations. A large amount of kernel and utility work was required to accomplish this task.

Project Lead for the NASA Ames NAStor project. The NAStor system is a Unix based high performance mass storage system which features high performance Disk I/O, and transparent access to Petabytes of robotic tape storage.

Project Lead for the NASA Ames LAN III project. The LAN III project is a new high performance local area network system which is built with HiPPI infrastructure. Managed budgets and procurements to have HiPPI over single mode fiber created for NASA. This project completely replaced the previous Ultranet LAN at a huge cost savings to NASA.

Designed and implemented a file system for a Write Once Optical Disk on an IBM PC with MS-DOS.

Created HiPPI IPI-3 device driver for SGI IRIX / Maximum Strategy HiPPI Disk Array.

Created both raw mode and block mode device drivers for IBM RS 6000 / Maximum Strategy Disk Array products

Managed a group of C programmers who ported an advanced CAD system from a Unix environment to an IBM MS-DOS environment.

Wrote numerous device drivers for graphics displays and co-processors on Sun workstations.

Ported Unix System III with Berkeley 4.2 file system to a parallel processing supercomputer, the Denelcor HEP.

Proposed, designed, and implemented a remote host communications package for a Cray 1 (serial number 7) to Vax 11/750 Engineering Workstation.

Improved speed and reliability of a CDC to Cray station protocol network.

Employment History

SGI/HPE

2016 to 2017 Milpitas, CA

Was the lead architect and manager of a small team to implement ZCA or Zero Copy Architecture, a unique fabric NVME project.

Xyratex / Seagate

2010-2016 Fremont, CA

Was one of the first four people brought in to start the ClusterStor product, first as OS Architect, later as Chief Architect and finally as Technical Director.

Video Vault Technology, Inc Mountian View, CA

2005-2008

Founded a startup for deployment of a portable set-top movie on demand

player with capacity to store 400+ hours of DVD quality

SanLight, Inc. San Jose, CA

2002-2005

Successfully sold TotalArchive to Sanlight, Inc., becoming the Chief

Technology Officer at this Storage Area Networking startup. In addition to the role

of CTO, I was also acting Chairman of the company's Advisory Board. In the CTO role, intimately involved with bringing TotalArchive's patented backup technology into a SAN environment, and making all of the key technical decisions on the development of Sanlight's InstantRecall appliance. Successfully sold Sanlight to Quantum, Inc in 2005

where the technology forms the basis of Quantums new disk to disk SAN backup

solution.

Total Archive Inc. Mountain View, CA

1999-2002

President and CEO - Business Plan creation, Continuous Remote Backup,

replication product, patent filing.

NASA Ames Research Center Mountain View, CA

1988-1999

Project Lead: NAStor RAID-5 development, file system and HSM development

Project Lead: LAN, HIPPI driver development, serial HIPPI, SAN Networks

Project Lead: NAStor, DMAPI committee work, DMIG HSM implementation, SAN

integration, GFS implementation

Sigma Design Englewood, CO

1985-1986

Sun 3 graphics device drivers, manager of systems group

Denelcor, Inc. Aurora, CO

1983-1985

Porting Berkeley 4.2 file system, porting Unix System III to Denelcor parallel

processing supercomputer.

United Information Systems Kansas City, MO

1980-1983

Cray front end work, CDC file, tape systems, VAX/VMS systems work.

Education

BS Computer Science University of Kansas Lawrence, KS

Publications

"A High Performance File System for Unix"

USENIX 1988 Workshop on Unix and Supercomputers

"RASH: A Rapid Access Storage Hierarchy"

USENIX Winter 1989 Conference - with Bob Henderson

"Distributed NAStore as the Next Step"

Eleventh IEEE Mass Storage Symposium - with Dave Tweten

References available upon request

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