Scaling Databases and File APIs with Programmable Ceph Object Storage

The Skyhook Data Management project (SkyhookDM.com) at the Center for Research in Open Source Software (cross.ucsc.edu) at UC Santa Cruz implements customized extensions through Ceph's object class interface that enables offloading database operations to the storage system. In our previous Vault '19 talk, we showed how SkyhookDM can transparently scale out databases. The SkyhookDM Ceph extensions are an example of our 'programmable storage' research efforts at UCSC, and can be accessed through commonly available external/foreign table database interfaces. Utilizing fast in-memory serialization libraries such as Google Flatbuffers and Apache Arrow, SkyhookDM currently implements common database functions such as SELECT, PROJECT, AGGREGATE, and indexing inside Ceph, along with lower-level data manipulations such as transforming data from row to column formats on RADOS servers.

In this talk, we will present three of our latest developments on the SkyhookDM project since Vault '19. First, SkyhookDM can be used to also offload operations of access libraries that support plugins for backends, such as HDF5 and its Virtual Object Layer. Second, in addition to row-oriented data format using Google's Flatbuffers, we have added support for column-oriented data formats using the Apache Arrow library within our Ceph extensions. Third, we added dynamic switching between row and column data formats within Ceph objects, a first step towards physical design management in storage systems, similar to physical design tuning in database systems.