Check out the new USENIX Web site.

USENIX Home . About USENIX . Events . membership . Publications . Students
NSDI '05 — Abstract

Shark: Scaling File Servers via Cooperative Caching

Siddhartha Annapureddy, Michael J. Freedman, and David Mazieres, New York University

Abstract

Network file systems offer a powerful, transparent interface for accessing remote data. Unfortunately, in current network file systems like NFS, clients fetch data from a central file server, inherently limiting the systemÕs ability to scale to many clients. While recent distributed (peer-topeer) systems have managed to eliminate this scalability bottleneck, they are often exceedingly complex and provide non-standard models for administration and accountability. We present Shark, a novel system that retains the best of both worldsÑthe scalability of distributed systems with the simplicity of central servers.

Shark is a distributed file system designed for largescale, wide-area deployment, while also providing a dropin replacement for local-area file systems. Shark introduces a novel cooperative-caching mechanism, in which mutually-distrustful clients can exploit each othersÕ file caches to reduce load on an origin file server. Using a distributed index, Shark clients find nearby copies of data, even when files originate from different servers. Performance results show that Shark can greatly reduce server load and improve client latency for read-heavy workloads both in the wide and local areas, while still remaining competitive for single clients in the local area. Thus, Shark enables modestly-provisioned file servers to scale to hundreds of read-mostly clients while retaining traditional usability, consistency, security, and accountability.

  • View the full text of this paper in HTML and PDF.
    Until May 2005, you will need your USENIX membership identification in order to access the full papers. The Proceedings are published as a collective work, © 2005 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.

  • If you need the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it from Adobe's site.

To become a USENIX Member, please see our Membership Information.

?Need help? Use our Contacts page.

Last changed: 9 June 2005 rc
Technical Program
NSDI '05 Home
USENIX home