BWCC: A FS-Cache Based Cooperative Caching System for Network Storage System

Abstract

A cooperative caching system, using disks as its cache media, is proposed for network storage system. This system is called Blue Whale Cooperative Caching System (BWCC). Through sharing the cached data among clients of cluster file system, the load on the centralized storage server is lowered, therefore, the BWCC significantly enhances the scalability of the network storage system. The advantages of BWCC are as follows: 1) direct data positioning technology without the participation of the centralized storage server guarantees low latency of cooperative data access, 2) supporting several granularities of data sharing is applicable to multiple data access patterns, 3) a global cache management strategy for Video-on-Demand service is designed according to the characteristics of the video data access pattern. BWCC has been implemented as a module in Linux Kernel-2.6.32. The preliminary experimental results verify the effectiveness of BWCC.