Concepts illustrated by this case study

¦ Performance Characteristics

¦ Microbenchmarks

The internals of a storage system tend to be hidden behind a simple interface, that of a linear array of blocks. There are many advantages to having a common interface for all storage systems: an operating system can use any storage system without modification, and yet the storage system is free to innovate behind this interface. For example, a single disk can map its internal geometry to the linear array in whatever way achieves the best performance; similarly, a multidisk RAID system can map the blocks on any number of disks to this same linear array. However, this fixed interface has a number of disadvantages as well; in particular, the operating system is not able to perform some performance, reliability, and security optimizations without knowing the precise layout of its blocks inside the underlying storage system.
In this case study, we will explore how software can be used to uncover the internal structure of a storage system hidden behind a block-based interface. The basic idea is to fingerprint the storage system: by running a well-defined workload on top of the storage system and measuring the amount of time required for different requests, one is able to infer a surprising amount of detail about the underlying system.

The Skippy algorithm, from work by Nisha Talagala and colleagues at U.C. Berkeley, uncovers the parameters of a single disk. The key is to factor out disk rotational effects by making consecutive seeks to individual sectors with addresses that differ by a linearly increasing amount (increasing by 1, 2, 3, and so forth). Thus, the basic algorithm skips through the disk, increasing the distance of the seek by one sector before every write, and outputs the distance and time for each write. The raw device interface is used to avoid file system optimizations. The SECTOR SIZE is set equal to the minimum amount of data that can be read at once from the disk (e.g., 512 bytes). (Skippy is described in more detail in Talagala et al. [1999].)

By graphing the time required for each write as a function of the seek distance, one can infer the minimal transfer time (with no seek or rotational latency), head switch time, cylinder switch time, rotational latency, and the number of heads in the disk. A typical graph will have four distinct lines, each with the same slope, but with different offsets. The highest and lowest lines correspond to requests that incur different amounts of rotational delay, but no cylinder or head switch costs; the difference between these two lines reveals the rotational latency of the disk. The second lowest line corresponds to requests that incur a head switch (in addition to increasing amounts of rotational delay). Finally, the third line corresponds to requests that incur a cylinder switch (in addition to rotational delay).

The results of running Skippy are shown for a mock disk (Disk Alpha) in Figure 6.25.

a. What is the minimal transfer time?

b. What is the rotational latency?

c. What is the head switch time?

d. What is the cylinder switch time?

e. What is the number of disk heads?