MDLFS: Exploiting Information to Improve Performance

Timothy E. Denehy
 
Nilofer F. Motiwala


Abstract:
In this work, we address the separation between file systems and storage systems. A file system that is aware of its underlying storage structure may be able to take advantage of its extra knowledge. MDLFS is a disk aware file system that tracks the performance of its storage components. This dynamic information is used to make informed decisions about the allocation of data to each of several disks. The performance of MDLFS using a variety of placement strategies is compared to FFS and LFS on top of a RAID storage system. Our test results show that discriminating among disks using performance information can lead to better throughput.

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