Hierarchical performance measurement and modeling of the linux file system (abstracts only)

File systems are very important components in a computer system. File system simulation can help to predict the performance of new system designs. It offers the advantages of the flexibility of modeling and the cost and time savings when utilizing simulation instead of full implementation. Being able to predict end-to-end file system performance against a pre-defined workload can help system designers to make decisions that could affect their entire product line, affecting several million dollars of investment. This paper presents a detailed simulation-based performance model of the Linux ext3 file system. The model is developed using Colored Petri Nets. A performance study using the model shows that the obtained results are close to the expected behavior of the real file system. The model shows that file system parameters have significant impact on the performance of the I/O when compared to the parameters of the disk subsystem.