Check out the new USENIX Web site.
USENIX, The Advanced Computing Systems Association

OSDI '06 Abstract

Pp. 321–334 of the Proceedings

Distributed Directory Service in the Farsite File System

John R. Douceur and Jon Howell, Microsoft Research

Abstract

We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a fully distributed directory service for Farsite, a logically centralized file system that is physically implemented on a loosely coupled network of desktop computers. Prior to this work, the Farsite system included distributed mechanisms for file content but centralized mechanisms for file metadata. Our distributed directory service introduces tree-structured file identifiers that support dynamically partitioning metadata at arbitrary granularity, recursive path leases for scalably maintaining name-space consistency, and a protocol for consistently performing operations on files managed by separate machines. It also mitigates metadata hotspots via file-field leases and the new mechanism of disjunctive leases. We experimentally show that Farsite can dynamically partition file-system metadata while maintaining full file-system semantics.
  • View the full text of this paper in HTML and PDF. Listen to the presentation in MP3 format.
    Click here if you have forgotten your password Until November 2007, you will need your USENIX membership identification in order to access the full papers. The Proceedings are published as a collective work, © 2006 by the USENIX Association. All Rights Reserved. Rights to individual papers remain with the author or the author's employer. Permission is granted for the noncommercial reproduction of the complete work for educational or research purposes. USENIX acknowledges all trademarks within this paper.
To become a USENIX member, please see our Membership Information.

Last changed: 23 April 2007 ac