Using file system virtualization to avoid metadata bottlenecks

Abstract—Parallel file systems are very sensitive to adverse conditions, and the lack of synergy between such file systems and some of the applications running on them has a negative impact on the overall system performance. Our observations indicate that the increased pressure on metadata management is one of the relevant causes of performance drops. This paper proposes a virtualization layer above the native file system that, transparently to the user, reorganizes the underlying directory tree, mitigating bottlenecks by taking advantage of the native file system optimizations and limiting the effects of potentially harmful application behavior. We developed COFS (COmposite File System) as a proof-of-concept virtual layer to evaluate the feasibility of the proposal.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

File system metadata virtualization

The advance of computing systems has brought new ways to use and access the stored data that push the architecture of traditional file systems to its limits, making them inadequate to handle the new needs. Current challenges affect both the performance of high-end computing systems and its usability from the applications perspective. On one side, high-performance computing equipment is rapidly developing into large-scale aggregations of computing elements in the form of clusters, grids or clouds. On the other side, there is a widening range of scientific and commercial applications that seek to exploit these new computing facilities. The requirements of such applications are also heterogeneous, leading to dissimilar patterns of use of the underlying file systems. Data centres have tried to compensate this situation by providing several file systems to fulfil distinct requirements. Typically, the different file systems are mounted on different branches of a directory tree, and the preferred use of each branch is publicised to users. A similar approach is being used in personal computing devices. Typically, in a personal computer, there is a visible and clear distinction between the portion of the file system name space dedicated to local storage, the part corresponding to remote file systems and, recently, the areas linked to cloud services as, for example, directories to keep data synchronized across devices, to be shared with other users, or to be remotely backed-up. In practice, this approach compromises the usability of the file systems and the possibility of exploiting all the potential benefits. We consider that this burden can be alleviated by determining applicable features on a per-file basis, and not associating them to the location in a static, rigid name space. Moreover, usability would be further increased by providing multiple dynamic name spaces that could be adapted to specific application needs. This thesis contributes to this goal by proposing a mechanism to decouple the user view of the storage from its underlying structure. The mechanism consists in the virtualization of file system metadata (including both the name space and the object attributes) and the interposition of a sensible layer to take decisions on where and how the files should be stored in order to benefit from the underlying file system features, without incurring on usability or performance penalties due to inadequate usage. This technique allows to present multiple, simultaneous virtual views of the name space and the file system object attributes that can be adapted to specific application needs without altering the underlying storage configuration. The first contribution of the thesis introduces the design of a metadata virtualization framework that makes possible the above-mentioned decoupling; the second contribution consists in a method to improve file system performance in large-scale systems by using such metadata virtualization framework; finally, the third contribution consists in a technique to improve the usability of cloud-based storage systems in personal computing devices.Postprint (published version

The Evolution of Cloud Data Architectures: Storage, Compute, and Migration

Recent advances in data architectures have shifted from on-premises to the cloud. However, new challenges emerge as data explosion continues to expand at an exponential rate. As a result, my Ph.D. research focuses on addressing the following challenges. First, cloud data-warehouses such as Snowflake, BigQuery, and Redshift often rely on storage systems such as distributed file systems or object stores to store massive amounts of data. The growth of data volumes is accompanied by an increase in the number of objects stored and the amount of metadata such systems must manage. By treating metadata management similar to data management, we built FileScale, an HDFS-based file system that replaces metadata management in HDFS with a three-tiered distributed architecture that incorporates a high throughput, distributed main-memory database system at the lowest layer, along with distributed caching and routing functionality above it. FileScale performs comparably to the single-machine architecture at a small scale, while enabling linear scalability as the file system metadata increases. Second, Function as a Service, or FaaS, is a new type of cloud-computing service that executes code in response to events without the complex infrastructure typically associated with building and launching microservices applications. FaaS offers cloud functions with millisecond billing granularity to be scaled automatically, independently, and instantaneously as needed. We built Flock, the first practical cloud-native SQL query engine that supports event stream processing on FaaS with heterogeneous hardware (x86 and Arm) with the ability to shuffle and aggregate data without requiring a centralized coordinator or remote storage such as Amazon S3. This architecture is more cost-effective than traditional systems, especially for dynamic workloads and continuous queries. Third, Software as a Service, or SaaS, is a method of software product delivery to end-users over the internet and via pay-as-you-go pricing in which the software is centrally hosted and managed by the cloud service provider. Continuous Deployment (CD) in SaaS, an aspect of DevOps, is the increasingly popular practice of frequent, automated deployment of software changes. To realize the benefits of CD, it must be straightforward to deploy updates to both front-end code and the database, even when the database’s schema has changed. Unfortunately, this is where current practices run into difficulty. So we built BullFrog, a PostgreSQL extension that is the first system to use lazy schema migration to support single-step, online schema evolution without downtime, which achieves efficient, exactly-once physical migration of data under contention

A Transparently-Scalable Metadata Service for the Ursa Minor Storage System

The metadata service of the Ursa Minor distributed storage system scales metadata throughput as metadata servers are added. While doing so, it correctly handles operations that involve metadata served by different servers, consistently and atomically updating such metadata. Unlike previous systems, Ursa Minor does so by reusing existing metadata migration functionality to avoid complex distributed transaction protocols. It also assigns object IDs to minimize the occurrence of multiserver operations. This approach allows Ursa Minor to implement a desired feature with less complexity than alternative methods and with minimal performance penalty (under 1 % in non-pathological cases).