Improving I/O performance through an in-kernel disk simulator

This paper presents two mechanisms that can significantly improve the I/O performance of both hard and solid-state drives for read operations: KDSim and REDCAP. KDSim is an in-kernel disk simulator that provides a framework for simultaneously simulating the performance obtained by different I/O syst...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: González Férez, Pilar, Piernas Canovas, Juan, Cortés, Toni|||0000-0002-2537-8937
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/100905
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/100905
https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/bxw006
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Cache memory
Operating systems (Computers)
Virtual disk
Disk modeling
Simultaneous evaluation
REDCAP
I/O performance
Disk cache
Memòria cau
Sistemes operatius (Ordinadors)
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Sistemes operatius
Descripción
Sumario:This paper presents two mechanisms that can significantly improve the I/O performance of both hard and solid-state drives for read operations: KDSim and REDCAP. KDSim is an in-kernel disk simulator that provides a framework for simultaneously simulating the performance obtained by different I/O system mechanisms and algorithms, and for dynamically turning them on and off, or selecting between different options or policies, to improve the overall system performance. REDCAP is a RAM-based disk cache that effectively enlarges the built-in cache present in disk drives. By using KDSim, this cache is dynamically activated/deactivated according to the throughput achieved. Results show that, by using KDSim and REDCAP together, a system can improve its I/O performance up to 88% for workloads with some spatial locality on both hard and solid-state drives, while it achieves the same performance as a ‘regular system’ for workloads with random or sequential access patterns.