CS262B Reading Summary
Serverless Network File Systems
Thomas E. Anderson, Michael D. Dahlin et al.
Feng Zhou
2/1/2004
Strong points of the paper are:
- Just as NOW, the emergence of fast switching LANs is an important
propelling reasons to use a de-centralized network file system.
One strong point of xFS is that it can exploit the storage and
processing power of multiple workstations/servers while at the same
time provides a single view of a file system. Unlike Andrew or
other previous network file systems, xFS not only makes the file system
accessible from a network, but also makes the file server a network of
machines itself.
- Using existing techniques like LFS and Zebra makes xFS easier to
construct. LFS is very useful for each node because it increases
write performance and eases local recovery. Techniques in Zebra,
such as the delta log, eases global recovery.
One major flaw.
One of the original usage scenarioes of xFS, i.e. using it between
trusted (departmental/company-wide) workstations, is flawed. This
implies heavy management burden. As computing becomes cheaper and
cheaper, the reduction of management overhead becomes more and more
important. Thus xFS in this scenario is a move in the wrong
directions. However, using xFS on a small number of
well-management servers, i.e. the other usage scenario, is much
better. Actually I can expect vendors wrapping up a cluster of
servers running xFS and sell it as a large scalable storage server.