SystemArray

SystemArray is a conceptual framework for organizing and managing collections of heterogeneous system resources—such as compute nodes, storage devices, and services—as a unified logical array. It provides a uniform addressing model, centralized metadata, and mechanisms for dynamic reconfiguration, fault isolation, and policy-driven management across large-scale systems. The concept emphasizes separation between the control plane, which handles coordination and state, and the data plane, which carries actual resource operations.

In a SystemArray, resources are represented as elements with unique indices and associated metadata, enabling consistent access patterns, replication, and load balancing. A SystemArray controller or manager maintains the global state, while distributed nodes perform localized work. Typical capabilities include scaling the array by adding or removing elements, performing coordinated operations, and enforcing reliability through replication, snapshots, and consistency guarantees.

Applications include cloud orchestration, high-availability storage systems, big data platforms, and edge deployments where uniform management of many resources simplifies automation and governance. While often described in theoretical and architectural discussions, concrete implementations vary and may integrate with existing orchestration, scheduling, or database technologies.

SystemArray is not a universally standardized product; it is a term used to describe a class of architectures that treat resource pools as arrays to streamline management, resilience, and performance in complex environments.