[comp.archives] [os-research] TR available

darrell@sequoia.ucsc.edu (Darrell Long) (04/22/91)

Archive-name: research/filesystems/swift-io-architecture/1991-04-20
Archive: midgard.ucsc.edu:pub/tr/ucsc-crl-91-08.ps.Z [128.114.14.6]
Original-posting-by: darrell@sequoia.ucsc.edu (Darrell Long)
Original-subject: TR available
Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN)

The following UCSC technical report (UCSC-CRL-91-08) is available via
anonymous FTP from midgard.ucsc.edu (128.114.14.6).

The file is pub/tr/ucsc-crl-91-08.ps.Z  Be sure to use binary more when doing
the transfer.


	Exploiting Multiple I/O Streams to Provide High Data-Rates


	    Luis-Felipe Cabrera                 Darrell D. E. Long
	IBM Almaden Research Center      Computer & Information Sciences
	Computer Science Department   University of California at Santa Cruz

	 Internet: cabrera@ibm.com      Internet: darrell@sequoia.ucsc.edu


				  ABSTRACT

	We present an I/O architecture, called Swift, that addresses
	the problem of data-rate mismatches between the requirements
	of an application, the maximum data-rate of the storage dev-
	ices,  and the data-rate of the interconnection medium.  The
	goal of Swift is to support integrated continuous multimedia
	in general purpose distributed systems.

	     In  installations  with  a  high-speed  interconnection
	medium, Swift will provide high data-rate transfers by using
	multiple slower storage devices in parallel.  The data-rates
	obtained  with  this approach scale well when using multiple
	storage devices and multiple  interconnections.   Swift  has
	the  flexibility  to use any appropriate storage technology,
	including disk arrays.  The ability to adapt to  technologi-
	cal advances will allow Swift to provide for ever increasing
	I/O demands.  To address the problem  of  partial  failures,
	Swift stores data redundantly.

	     Using the UNIX operating system, we have constructed  a
	simplified  prototype  of  the  Swift architecture.  Using a
	single Ethernet-based local-area network and three  servers,
	the  prototype  provides  data-rates  that  are almost three
	times as fast as access to the local SCSI disk in  the  case
	of writes.  When compared with NFS, the Swift prototype pro-
	vides double the data-rate for reads  and  eight  times  the
	data-rate for writes.  The data-rate of our prototype scales
	almost linearly in the number of servers and the  number  of
	network segments.  Its performance is shown to be limited by
	the speed of the Ethernet-based local-area network.

	     We also constructed a simulation model to show how  the
	Swift  architecture  can exploit storage, communication, and
	processor advances, and to locate the components  that  will
	limit  I/O performance.  In a simulated gigabit/second token
	ring local-area network the data-rates  are  seen  to  scale
	proportionally  to  the size of the transfer unit and to the
	number of storage agents.

-- comp.archives file verification
midgard.ucsc.edu
-rw-r--r--  1 jean     ftp         60619 Apr 19 23:06 pub/tr/ucsc-crl-91-08.ps.Z
found swift-io-architecture ok
midgard.ucsc.edu:pub/tr/ucsc-crl-91-08.ps.Z

darrell@terra.ucsc.edu (Darrell Long) (06/10/91)

Archive-name: internet/research/golding-quorum-multicast/1991-06-03
Archive: midgard.ucsc.edu:/pub/tr/ucsc-crl-91-18.ps.Z [128.114.14.6]
Original-posting-by: darrell@terra.ucsc.edu (Darrell Long)
Original-subject: TR available (M.S. thesis)
Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN)

The following technical report is available via anonymous FTP from
midgard.ucsc.edu and also through electronic mail.

For electronic mail,

% mail reports@midgard.ucsc.edu
@@ send ucsc-crl-91-18.ps.Z from tr
^D

ACCESSING REPLICATED DATA IN A LARGE-SCALE DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM

			by

		Richard A. Golding

Many distributed applications use replicated data to improve the
availability of the data, and to improve access latency by locating
copies of the data near to their use.  This thesis presents a new
family of communication protocols, called quorum multicasts, that
provide efficient communication services for replicated data.  Quorum
multicasts are similar to ordinary multicasts, which deliver a message
to a set of destinations.  The new protocols extend this model by
allowing delivery to a subset of the destinations, selected according to
distance or expected data currency.  These protocols provide
well-defined failure semantics, and can distinguish between
communication failure and replica failure with high probability.

The thesis includes a performance evaluation of three quorum multicast
protocols.  This required taking several measurements of the Internet to
determine distributions for communication latency and failure.  The
results indicate that the behavior of recent messages is a useful
predictor for the performance of the next.  A simulation study of quorum
multicasts, based on the Internet measurements, shows that these
protocols provide low latency and require few messages.  A second study
that measured a test application running at several sites confirmed
these results.

-- comp.archives file verification
midgard.ucsc.edu
-rw-r--r--  1 jean     ftp        257483 May 31 17:15 /pub/tr/ucsc-crl-91-18.ps.Z
found golding-quorum-multicast ok
midgard.ucsc.edu:/pub/tr/ucsc-crl-91-18.ps.Z