Optimizing SSD Performance for OneFS Workloads

EMC Isilon Storage Computer Science, 2012-13

Liaison(s): Steve Hubbell ’95, Ben Melhuish ’94
Advisor(s): Geoff Kuenning
Students(s): David Ersek, Brad Jensen (PM-S), Stephen Levine (PM-F), Matthew Prince

Isilon recently began offering storage nodes that incorporate solid-state disks (SSDs). Although SSDs differ significantly from hard drives, they employ a flash translation layer that allows them to be treated as hard drives. However, SSDs still have very different optimal access patterns. We developed methods for optimizing writes to SSDs in Isilon’s OneFS file system.