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An empirical study of a wide-area distributed file system

Authors:

Mirjana Spasojevic and

M. SatyanarayananAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), Volume 14, Issue 2

Pages 200 - 222

https://doi.org/10.1145/227695.227698

Published: 01 May 1996 Publication History

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Abstract

The evolution of the Andrew File System (AFS) into a wide-area distributed file system has encouraged collaboration and information dissemination on a much broader scale than ever before. We examine AFS as a provider of wide-area file services to over 100 organizations around the world. We discuss usage characteristics of AFS derived from empirical measurements of the system. Our observations indicate that AFS provides robust and efficient data access in its current configuration, thus confirming its viability as a design point for wide-area distributed file systems.

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Cited By

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Al Assaf MJiang XQin XAbid MQiu MZhang J(2018)Informed Prefetching for Distributed Multi-Level Storage SystemsJournal of Signal Processing Systems10.1007/s11265-017-1277-z90:4(619-640)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11265-017-1277-z
Mavani M(2013)Comparative Analysis of Andrew Files System and Hadoop Distributed File SystemLecture Notes on Software Engineering10.7763/LNSE.2013.V1.27(122-125)Online publication date: 2013
https://doi.org/10.7763/LNSE.2013.V1.27
Sliman LCharroux BStroppa Y(2013)A New Collaborative and Cloud Based Simulation as a Service PlatformProceedings of the 2013 UKSim 15th International Conference on Computer Modelling and Simulation10.1109/UKSim.2013.108(611-616)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/UKSim.2013.108
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Index Terms

An empirical study of a wide-area distributed file system
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Measurement
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        Memory management
        Distributed memory
    2. Software system structures
      1. Distributed systems organizing principles

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Reviews

Reviewer: Brett D. Fleisch

Various Andrew File System (AFS) mechanisms in a large-scale, wide-area context are presented and their effectiveness is evaluated. The authors' goal is to observe wide-area AFS usage and to characterize its profile. The paper also assesses how well AFS works at its current scale and determines whether there are any imminent limits to its future growth. The study consisted of instrumenting AFS to permit the collection of data from actual AFS use during two 12-week periods. Both clients and servers were instrumented. Care was taken that systems being observed were not significantly perturbed. The paper presents the data in an organized fashion and corroborates the data with anecdotal evidence that was collected by means of a questionnaire to the AFS community. In the final section, a comparison between the World Wide Web and AFS poses the question of whether the Web will replace AFS. The paper is well written and provides significant evidence, ranging from observed experience to study of a commercial distributed file system. Because many vendors do not provide significant studies of their experimental or commercial artifacts, this paper is valuable in its contribution of evidence and methodologies for empirical observations.

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cover image ACM Transactions on Computer Systems

ACM Transactions on Computer Systems Volume 14, Issue 2

May 1996

84 pages

ISSN:0734-2071

EISSN:1557-7333

DOI:10.1145/227695

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 May 1996

Published in TOCS Volume 14, Issue 2

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Al Assaf MJiang XQin XAbid MQiu MZhang J(2018)Informed Prefetching for Distributed Multi-Level Storage SystemsJournal of Signal Processing Systems10.1007/s11265-017-1277-z90:4(619-640)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11265-017-1277-z
Mavani M(2013)Comparative Analysis of Andrew Files System and Hadoop Distributed File SystemLecture Notes on Software Engineering10.7763/LNSE.2013.V1.27(122-125)Online publication date: 2013
https://doi.org/10.7763/LNSE.2013.V1.27
Sliman LCharroux BStroppa Y(2013)A New Collaborative and Cloud Based Simulation as a Service PlatformProceedings of the 2013 UKSim 15th International Conference on Computer Modelling and Simulation10.1109/UKSim.2013.108(611-616)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/UKSim.2013.108
Birman KBirman K(2012)Remote Procedure Calls and the Client/Server ModelGuide to Reliable Distributed Systems10.1007/978-1-4471-2416-0_6(185-247)Online publication date: 2012
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2416-0_6
Hwang G(2010)Supporting Cloud Computing in Thin-Client/Server Computing ModelProceedings of the International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications10.1109/ISPA.2010.42(612-618)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2010
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Smaldone SGanapathy VIftode LCarminati BJoshi J(2009)Working set-based access control for network file systemsProceedings of the 14th ACM symposium on Access control models and technologies10.1145/1542207.1542241(207-216)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2009
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Keator D(2009)Management of Information in Distributed Biomedical CollaboratoriesBiomedical Informatics10.1007/978-1-59745-524-4_1(1-23)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2009
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Bradford RKotsovinos EFeldmann ASchiöberg HKrintz CHand STarditi D(2007)Live wide-area migration of virtual machines including local persistent stateProceedings of the 3rd international conference on Virtual execution environments10.1145/1254810.1254834(169-179)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2007
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Walker E(2006)A distributed file system for a wide-area high performance computing infrastructureProceedings of the 3rd conference on USENIX Workshop on Real, Large Distributed Systems - Volume 310.5555/1254840.1254849(9-9)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2006
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Wang FZhang SFeng DJiang HZeng LLv S(2006)A hybrid scheme for object allocation in a distributed object-storage systemProceedings of the 6th international conference on Computational Science - Volume Part IV10.1007/11758549_57(396-403)Online publication date: 28-May-2006
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Abstract

References

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Index Terms

Recommendations

The Influence of Scale on Distributed File System Design

Integrating content-based access mechanisms with hierarchical file systems

Z/Os Distributed File Service Zseries File System Implementation Z/Os V1r10

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