When Caching Systems Meet Emerging Storage Devices: A Case Study
Zhen Lin, Lianjie Cao, Faraz Ahmed, Hui Lu, Puneet Sharma · 2023
Block-layer caching systems improve the I/O performance by using hybrid storage devices; the advent of fast, byte-addressable storage enables caching systems to further leverage new storage tiers (e.g., with persistent memory as the cache device and SSD as the backend device) to achieve better caching performance. However, the new storage devices also challenge the design and implementation of existing block-based caching systems. This paper conducts a comprehensive performance study of a popular caching system, Open CAS, and identifies new, unrevealed software bottlenecks. Our observations and root cause analysis cast light on optimizing the software stack of caching systems to incorporate emerging storage technologies.