MDTM: Optimizing Data Transfer Using Multicore-Aware I/O Scheduling

Bulk data transfer is facing significant challenges in the coming era of big data. There are multiple performance bottlenecks along the end-to-end path from the source to destination storage system. The limitations of current generation data transfer tools themselves can have a significant impact on end-to-end data transfer rates. In this paper, we identify the issues that lead to underperformance of these tools, and present a new data transfer tool with an innovative I/O scheduler called MDTM. The MDTM scheduler exploits underlying multicore layouts to optimize throughput by reducing delay and contention for I/O reading and writing operations. With our evaluations, we show how MDTM successfully avoids NUMA-based congestion and significantly improves end-to-end data transfer rates across high-speed wide area networks.