System and method for network storage prioritization of demand-page operations

摘要

One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for establishing high user priority for Ethernet frames related to demand-paging operations over iSCSI. The iSCSI initiator is configured to identify demand-page operations using techniques specific to the operating system and to set the 802.1q tag control information (TCI) user priority bit field to reflect high priority for demand-page related Ethernet frames. The demand-page related Ethernet frames are then delivered to the iSCSI target with a higher priority through the intervening Ethernet network than other traffic. Overall performance of demand paging operations is improved relative to prior art systems through an average reduction in network latency.