Title
Improving file system reliability with I/O shepherding
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.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1145/1294261.1294290
SOSP
Keywords
Field
DocType
data protection,reliability,lines of code,disk scheduling,fault tolerant,storage system,fault tolerance
File system,Disk buffer,Checksum,Computer science,CPU cache,Scheduling (computing),Input/output,Fault tolerance,Operating system,Embedded system,Source lines of code
Conference
Volume
Issue
ISSN
41
6
0163-5980
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
28
1.02
26
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Haryadi S. Gunawi155436.58
Vijayan Prabhakaran2187290.86
Swetha Krishnan3292.09
Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau43133307.84
Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau53120383.86