Optimizing Throughput in a Workstation-based Network File System over a High Bandwidth Local Area Network

摘要

This paper describes methods of optimizing a client/server network file system to take advantage of high bandwidth local area networks in a conventional distributed computing environment. The environment contains hardware that removes network and disk bandwidth bottlenecks. The remaining bottlenecks at clients include excessive context switching, inefficient data translation, and cumbersome data encapsulation methods, When these are removed, the null-write performance of a current implementation of Sun's Network File System improves by 30%. A prototype system including a high speed RAM disk demonstrates an 18% improvement in overall write throughput. The prototype system fully utilizes the available peripheral bandwidth of the server.