Performance analysis of mass storage service alternatives for distributed systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on software engineering Vol. 15; no. 2; pp. 120 - 133
• Main Authors: Ramakrishnan, K.K., Emer, J.S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.02.1989; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Computer networks; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Costs; Exact sciences and technology; Network interfaces; Network servers; Parameter estimation; Performance analysis; Performance evaluation; Prototypes; Software; Throughput; Time measurement; Storage management; Mass storage; Performance analysis; Queuing network; Distributed system; Modeling; Operating system
• DOI: 10.1109/32.21739
• ISSN: 0098-5589

The authors consider the performance of alternative mass-storage services for a client-server-style distributed system. Some qualitative arguments are presented on the ramifications of implementations of mass-storage services at various levels of the storage semantics hierarchy. The authors concentrate, in particular, on contrasting disk and file services. The functionalities of disk and file services are distinguished by their primitive operations: individual disk-block access for the disk service, and individual file-block access for the file service. This difference results in different partitionings of the computation between the client and server, as well as different network communication requirements. To understand the ramifications of such differences between the services, the authors present performance estimates for basic disk and file services. Performance estimates for several design alternatives are presented.< >