A high-speed and low-cost storage architecture based on virtual interface

Over the years, the network storage bandwidth has increased rapidly while the node-to-node latency has not decreased much. This is because the latency is dominated by the protocol software execution time in the kernel, instead of by the raw transmission time over the link. Virtual Interface (VI) protocol has been proposed to overcome the software overhead of the TCP/IP. In this paper, we introduce another new technology vSCSI (VI-attached SCSI) to compete with iSCSI in LAN (Local Area Networks) environment, and compare performance of vSCSI and iSCSI experimentally. Meanwhile, we present a Virtual Interface Storage Architecture (VISA) as a new network storage architecture which uses vSCSI as the network communication protocol. Then, we can take advantage of VI’s superior performance over TCP/IP in LAN environment. Also, actually we have implemented and measured our data transport and Remote Procedure Call (RPC) layer over VI. The aim of our design and implementation is to put forward new techniques to reduce overheads.

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