"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

-- Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675

It would be an understatement if I say I would like to extend my profound thanks to my major Professor Dr. Daniel Andresen for all the support and guidance throughout my Masters and thesis. I have learned a lot from him, both on the research and non-technical side, and all that will help me in my future. And I would also like to thank him for being generous for allowing me access to Nichols 119 lab, where I spent most of my Masters life.

I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Gurdip Singh and Dr. Mitchell Neilsen for being patient while I worked on the thesis topic and also for supporting me during my Masters. Special thanks for the excellent graduate-level courses they offered.

I would like to extend sincere thanks to Valerie Henson for having faith in me while I explored the topic in the thesis further. Without her constant support and positive energy this work wouldn't have been possible.

I owe a lot to Rik van Riel for having enormous confidence in me and this idea. I was glad to have interacted with him on numerous occasions discussing ideas and learning. He was the guy I would run to whenever I had problems. I thank him for all his support. I also thank him for introducing me to number of Linux file system folks. I would also like to thank Arjan van de Ven, Zach Brown, Peter Staubach, Garth Gibson, and Stephen Tweedie for sharing their thoughts on this topic. All of the input was crucial.

Also thanks to Dave Jones and his blog that allowed me to have a wonderful summer in Boston interning with Red Hat, Inc., from where this work fruitioned.

On personal side, I would like to thank my parents, to whom this work is dedicated, for their unparalleled care and love. I hope, with all my work throughout my Masters, I'm able to make up for at least something for the time that I could not spend with you. Also I would like to thank rest of my family for all the laughter and being with me during all my times throughout my education so far.

I have thanked just a small fraction of people who have been instrumental for shaping my career so far and I ask forgiveness from those who have been omitted unintentionally.

Thank you all!