Type
Text
Type
Thesis
Advisor
Zadok, Erez | Ferdman, Mike | Tarasov, Vasily.
Date
2016-12-01
Keywords
Computer science | Design and implementation, FUSE, Optimisations, Performance Analysis, User-Space File System
Department
Department of Computer Science
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77254
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
Traditionally, file systems were implemented as part of operating systems kernels, which provide a limited set of tools and facilities to a programmer. As complexity of file systems grew, many new file systems began being developed in user space. Low performance is considered the main disadvantage of user-space file systems but the extent of this problem has never been explored systematically. As a result, the topic of user-space file systems remains rather controversial: while some consider user-space file systems a ``toy'' not to be used in production, others develop full-fledged production file systems in user space. In this thesis we analyze the design and implementation of the most widely known user-space file system framework, FUSE, for Linux; we characterize its performance for a wide range of workloads. We present FUSE performance with various mount and configuration options, using 45 different workloads that were generated using Filebench on two different hardware configurations. We instrumented FUSE to extract useful statistics and traces, which helped us analyze its performance bottlenecks and present our analysis results. Our experiments indicate that depending on the workload and hardware used, performance degradation caused by FUSE can be non-existent or as high as minus 83\%, even when optimized. Our thesis is that user-space file systems can indeed be used in production (non ``toy'') settings, but their applicability depends on the expected workloads. | 55 pages
Recommended Citation
Vangoor, Bharath Kumar Reddy, "To FUSE or not to FUSE? Analysis and Performance Characterization of the FUSE User-Space File System Framework" (2016). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 3077.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/3077