A Component-Based End-to-End Simulation of the Linux File System

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2011

Publication Title

Journal of Software and Systems Modeling

Publisher

Springer

Abstract

The Linux file system is designed with components utilizing a layered architecture. The upper components hide details of the lower components, and each layer presents unified and simple interfaces to the layers above and below. This design helps Linux to be flexible as well as to provide support for multiple types of storage devices. In this paper, this component architecture is used to develop a realistic simulation without having to model lower level details of the hardware layer or particular storage devices. A detailed simulation-based performance model of the Linux ext3 file system has been developed using Colored Petri Nets. The extensive validation study using the model obtains results that are close to the expected behavior of the real file system. The model demonstrates that file system parameters have a significant impact on the I/O performance.

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