Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank several people who made major contributions to this book. Matt O'Keefe helped me immensely when I was just getting under way by pointing out weaknesses in my previous analysis of system storage processes. He also got me started on the more realistic and Byzantine analysis that runs throughout this book. Matt has contributed heavily to the development of open-source storage software for Linux and possesses major storage wisdom.

Toward the end of the project, I circled up with Bruce Thompson for a sanity check and some finishing touches. Bruce truly has an advanced view of storage, coming from many years of working through the strange and frustrating relationships between file systems, operating systems, and device drivers. When Bruce tells you how something works, you can take it to the bank.

Mike Workman is no longer involved in the day-to-day grindings of the disk drive industry; nonetheless, he is an undisputed authority on the subject. Sincere best wishes for you, Mike, and your team at Pillar. May your star rise and hover long. Big thanks also to my good friend John Groves, the SCSI I/O master in Austin. John and I like to talk about everything from music to politics to storage. But when it comes to storage I/O processes, John is the teacher and I am the student.

A heaping helping of gratitude to Steve Legg, a soft-spoken, hugely talented, and patient man if ever there was one. This is a person I want to take human being lessons from, but, in the meantime, I'll settle for insights on virtualization, clusters, and multipathing. Joel Harrison is one of those rare people who comprehends technology, industry, people, and organizations equally well with amazing deep-blue clarity and deft humor. He is a true master of the storage world.

Big thanks to James Long for his generous assistance with determining the contents and scope of the book when it was just a bunch of raw ideas. Also, an enormous debt of gratitude goes to Jim Schachterle for marshalling this project through the long journey with an author who seldom met deadlines. The technical editors, Phil Lowden, John Nelsen, and Guy Shimabuku, also deserve credit for their work reviewing the contents and pointing out things that needed to be set right.

Thanks also to John Howarth, Ron Riffe, Jeff Browning, Jeff Barnett, Joaquin Ruiz, Gordon Arnold, and Charles Potter for their help.