Structure and Performance of the Direct Access File System
Kostas Magoutis, Salimah Addetia, Alexandra Fedorova, Ra Fedorova, Jeffrey S. Chase, Jeffrey S. Chase, Andrew J. Gallatin, Richard Kisley, Rajiv G. Wickremesinghe, Eran Gabber · 2001
The Direct Access File System (DAFS) is an emerging industrial standard for network-attached storage. DAFS takes advantage of new user-level net- work interface standards. This enables a user-level file system structure in which client-side functionality for remote data access resides in a library rather than in the kernel. This structure addresses longstanding performance problems stemming from weak integration of buffering layers in the network transport, kernel-based file systems and applica- tions. The benefits of this architecture include lightweight, portable and asynchronous access to network storage and improved application control over data movement, caching and prefetching.