Analysis of file system space utilization patterns in UNIX based volumes

Abstract

File system is an abstraction of the physical storage medium. One of its objectives is to facilitate cataloguing of data in the form of files and directories on the physical storage media for easy and efficient retrieval. Over the years, even though storage capacities have increased drastically but no major architectural enhancement in the area of file systems have appeared. In this paper, we present our findings and an analysis of a study of the usage patterns of storage volumes in UNIX environment. This study is based only on those parameters that are directly related to the efficiency of a file system, i.e., file size, number of files in a directory, number of subdirectories in a directory, file name lengths and path lengths. The distribution of these parameters has been studied under different conditions of utilization. The results obtained are significantly important and provide considerable information for he design of a new file system.