A Heterogeneity-Aware Region-Level Data Layout for Hybrid Parallel File Systems

Parallel file systems (PFS) are commonly used in high-end computing systems. With the emergence of solid state drives (SSD), hybrid PFSs, which consist of both HDD and SSD servers, provide a practical I/O system solution for data-intensive applications. However, most existing PFS layout schemes are inefficient for hybrid PFSs due to their lack of awareness of the performance differences between heterogeneous servers and the workload changes between different parts of a file. This lack of recognition can result in severe I/O performance degradation. In this study, we propose a heterogeneity-aware region-level (HARL) data layout scheme to improve the data distribution of a hybrid PFS. HARL first divides a file into fine-grained, varying sized regions according to the changes of an application's I/O workload, then chooses appropriate file stripe sizes on heterogeneous servers based on the server performance for each file region. Experimental results of representative benchmarks show that HARL can greatly improve the I/O system performance.