Performance Evaluation of Block Device Layer with Automatic Parallelism Tuning Using Heterogeneous IP-SAN Protocols

In our previous work, we have proposed a block device layer called BDL-APT (Block Device Layer with Automatic Parallelism Tuning), which maximizes the performance of heterogeneous IP-SAN protocols in a long-fat network. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of BDL-APT with heterogeneous IP-SAN protocols (i.e., iSCSI, NBD and GNBD) in a long-fat network. We implemented BDL-APT as a layer of MD (Multiple Device) driver, which is one of major software RAID implementations included in the Linux kernel. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of BDL-APT with heterogeneous IP-SAN protocols in long-fat networks regardless of IP-SAN protocols.