Evaluating Host Aware SMR Drives

Authors: 

Fenggang Wu, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Ming-Chang Yang, National Taiwan University; Ziqi Fan, Baoquan Zhang, Xiongzi Ge, and David H.C. Du, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Abstract: 

Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology increases the areal density of hard disk drives. Among the three types of SMR drives on the market today, Host Aware SMR (HA-SMR) drives look the most promising. In this paper, we carry out evaluation to understand the performance of HA-SMR drives with the objective of building large-scale storage systems using this type of drive. We focus on evaluating the special features of HA-SMR drives, such as the open zone issue and media cache cleaning efficiency. Based on our observations we propose a novel host-controlled indirection buffer to enhance the drive’s I/O performance. Finally, we present a case study of the open zone issue to show the potential of this host-controlled indirection buffer for HA-SMR drives.

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BibTeX
@inproceedings {196382,
author = {Fenggang Wu and Ming-Chang Yang and Ziqi Fan and Baoquan Zhang and Xiongzi Ge and David H.C. Du},
title = {Evaluating Host Aware {SMR} Drives},
booktitle = {8th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage 16)},
year = {2016},
address = {Denver, CO},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotstorage16/workshop-program/presentation/wu},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = jun
}
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