Understanding Solaris TM Filesystems and Paging
Jonathan L. Bertoni · 1998
This trio of papers was prepared for publication in September of 1996 when the author was a member of the Desknet group in Sun Microsystems Laboratories. He is presently in the Solaris Products group. Tuning Solaris UFS Bandwidth The purpose of this paper is to provide general tuning guidelines for getting the best bandwidth possible from large files using Solaris UFS. Information on filesystem parameters, system variables, device and striping configurations, application changes, and I/O test programs is provided. Understanding the Solaris VM Paging System The goal of this paper is to give a basic introduction to the Solaris virtual memory paging algorithms. The information presented here provides a basis for system tuning experiments and understanding paging-related performance problems; however, this sketch is meant only as a starting point. Trends in Single-Host Filesystems Technology This paper discusses alternatives in single-host filesystems. Its purpose is to show how technology trends have changed design tradeoffs and made obsolete many assumptions in older filesystems. Examples of current filesystems are compared to show relative strengths and weaknesses, as well as inherent architec-tural limitations.