The ADvanced Systems Laboratory (ADSL)
Publication abstract
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Improving File System Reliability with
I/O Shepherding
Haryadi S. Gunawi,
Vijayan Prabhakaran*,
Swetha Krishnan,
Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau,
Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau
Department of Computer Sciences,
University of Wisconsin - Madison
*Microsoft Research - Silicon Valley
Abstract:
We introduce a new reliability infrastructure for file systems called I/O shepherding. I/O shepherding allows a file system developer to craft nuanced reliability policies to detect and recover from a wide range of storage system failures. We incorporate shepherding into the Linux ext3 file system through a set of changes to the consistency management subsystem, layout engine, disk scheduler, and buffer cache. The resulting file system, CrookFS, enables a broad class of policies to be easily and correctly specified. We implement numerous policies, incorporating data protection techniques such as retry, parity, mirrors, checksums, sanity checks, and data structure repairs; even complex policies can be implemented in less than 100 lines of code, confirming the power and simplicity of the shepherding framework. We also demonstrate that shepherding is properly integrated, adding less than 5% overhead to the I/O path.
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