On Maximizing IP-SAN Throughput over TCP Connections with Automatic Parallelism Tuning for Long-Fat Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose BDL-APT (Block Device Layer with Automatic Parallelism Tuning) that maximizes the throughput of IP-SAN protocols in long-fat networks. BDL-APT parallelizes data transfer using multiple IP-SAN sessions at a block device layer, and adjusts the number of active IP-SAN sessions automatically according to network status. A block device layer is a layer that receives read/write requests from an application or a file system, and relays those requests to a storage device. BDL-APT automatically optimizes the number of IP-SAN sessions based on the measured network status using our parallelism tuning mechanism based on a numerical computation algorithm, Golden Section Search method. We perform preliminarily investigation on the effectiveness of BDL-APT in realistic network environments using our BDL-APT implementation. Consequently, we demonstrate that our BDL-APT operates effectively in long-fat networks.