The Storage Hierarchy is Not a Hierarchy: Optimizing Caching on Modern Storage Devices with Orthus

Kan Wu, Zhihan Guo, Guanzhou Hu, Kaiwei Tu, Ramnatthan Alagappan, Rathijit Sen, Kwanghyun Park, Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau, Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

We introduce non-hierarchical caching (NHC), a novel approach to caching in modern storage hierarchies. NHC improves performance as compared to classic caching by redirecting excess load to devices lower in the hierarchy when it is advantageous to do so. NHC dynamically adjusts allocation and access decisions, thus maximizing performance (e.g., high throughput, low 99%-ile latency). We implement NHC in Orthus-CAS (a block-layer caching kernel module) and Orthus-KV (a user-level caching layer for a key-value store). We show the efficacy of NHC via a thorough empirical study: Orthus-KV and Orthus-CAS offer significantly better performance (by up to 2) than classic caching on various modern hierarchies, under a range of realistic workloads.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 19th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2021
PublisherUSENIX Association
Pages307-323
Number of pages17
ISBN (Electronic)9781939133205
StatePublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes
Event19th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: Feb 23 2021Feb 25 2021

Conference

Conference19th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period2/23/212/25/21

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Software

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