Re: [ANNOUNCE] DualFS: File System with Meta-data and Data Separation

[sfaibish <sfaibish@emc.com>]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 22:06:37 -0500, Sorin Faibish <sfaibish@emc.com> wrote:

> Introducing DualFS
>
> File System developers played with the idea of separation of
> meta-data from data in file systems for a while. The idea was
> lately revived by a small group of file system enthusiasts
>  from Spain (from the little known University of Murcia) and
> it is called DualFS. We believe that the separation idea
> will bring to Linux file systems great value.
>
> We see DualFS as a next-generation journaling file system which
> has the same consistency guaranties as traditional journaling
> file systems but better performance characteristics. The new file
> system puts data and meta-data on different devices (usually, two
> partitions on the same disk or different disks), and manages them
> in very different ways:
>
> 1. DualFS has only one copy of every meta-data block. This copy is
>     in the meta-data device,
>
> 2. The meta-data device is a log which is used by DualFS both to
>     read and to write meta-data blocks.
>
> 3. DualFS avoids an extra copy of meta-data blocks, which allow
>     DualFS to achieve higher performance than other journaling file
>     systems.
>
> 4. DualFS implements performance enhancements: meta-data prefetch,
>     on-line meta-data relocation and faster fsck and mkfs operations.
>
> 5. DualFS file system is suitable for use with TB and PB of storage
>
> We have carried out different experiments which compare DualFS and
> other popular Linux file systems, namely, Ext2, Ext3, XFS, JFS, and
> ReiserFS. The results, both performance and management, prove the
> value of the new file system design based on the separation of data
> and metadata which increase performance dramatically up to 97% by
> simply using an additional partition of same disk.
>
> We have performed extensive tests using micro-benchmarks as well
> as macro-benchmarks including Postmark v1.5, SpecWeb99, TPCC-uva.
> We also measured performance of maintenance tasks like mkfs and
> fsck which all show that DualFS performance is superior to all the
> other file systems tested with performance advantage in the range
> between 50-300% depending on the benchmark and the configuration.
> And all this performance advantage is a direct result of the
> separation of the meta-data and data.
>
> The project started in 2000 by Juan Piernas Canovas as the primary
> and almost unique contributor, with some small contributions by Toni
> Cortes, and Jose M. Garcia. The project was stopped for some time. We
> restarted the project last year, and after several months of updates
> and tests we created a SourceForge project with the intent to share
> the value of this old and yet new concept.
>
> The DualFS code, tools and performance papers are available at:
>
>   	<http://sourceforge.net/projects/dualfs>
>
> The code requires kernel patches to 2.4.19 (oldies but goodies) and
> a separate fsck code.  The latest kernel we used it for is 2.6.11
> and we hope with you help to port it to the latest Linux kernel.
>
> We will present the architecture, principles and performance
> characterization at the LFS07 next week.
>
> We are very interested to get your feedback and criticism.
>
> Sorin Faibish and Juan Piernas Canovas
> --------------------------------------
>
>
>
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