If you read a couple of key papers, you'd be well introduced to the fundamentals of linux in-kernel filesystems. File systems like ext4 are descended from this

If you read a couple of key papers, you'd be well introduced to the fundamentals of linux in-kernel filesystems. File systems like ext4 are descended from this approach: https://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/smm/05.fastfs/paper.pdf https://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/smm/05.fastfs/paper.pdf File systems like btrfs, f2fs, etc are descended from this approach (log structured file systems): https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/lfs.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/lfs.pdf For cloud based storage, the LSM paper (w/ leveldb), and HDFS are good foundational references imho. Obviously there are a lot of details beyond those areas, but understanding these are fairly short but will give you a basis to get much further to more cutting edge R&D discussions.