Modern server systems incorporate complex hardware and software technologies, such as solid-state drives and software virtualization. Maximizing the performance of these complex systems involves many challenges. For example, their performance can often be strongly affected by multiple configuration parameters. At the same time, service providers using these servers often have complex performance objectives, such as achieving multiple performance targets at the same time. In this dissertation, we address three such challenges: improving space efficiency in solid-state drives used as caches (and consequently performance) for storage arrays, reducing performance variability in virtualized systems, and engineering performance to meet multiple performance targets. We built three systems to tackle these challenges concretely. The first system, called Nitro, uses deduplication and local compression to increase the effective (solid-state) cache size of network-attached storage systems, improving performance and space efficiency while minimizing total cost. The second system, called VirtualFence, leverages solid-state drives and non-work-conserving scheduling to provide consistent I/O performance in virtualized multi-tenant systems. The third system, called OpTune, mitigates the complexity of tuning performance to meet multiple performance targets in multi-tier systems using optimization. Our extensive experimental evaluations show that our systems can consistently improve performance and/or achieve the desired performance objectives. These positive results suggest that the principles and techniques embodied in our systems are strong steps toward effectively managing the performance of modern server systems.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Computer Science
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_6737
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (xii, 111 p. : ill.)
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Hard disks (Computer science)
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Solid state electronics
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Client/server computing
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Cheng Li
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore19991600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
AssociatedObject
Type
License
Name
Author Agreement License
Detail
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.