HCCache: A hybrid client-side cache management scheme for I/O-intensive workloads in network-based file systems

Client-side caching is an effective technique to improve I/O performance in network-based file systems. However, current block-indexed caching structure suffers from cache efficiency problem under high concurrency environment, especially for small files workloads. In this paper, we present a hybrid client-side caching (HCCache) scheme to avoid performance degradation caused by the block interleaving problem and increase the efficiency of cache data management by customizing content addressable level for files with different sizes. Two new metrics are also proposed to accurately evaluate the cache efficiency based on the analysis of shortcomings of hit rate metrics. Extensive simulations show the I/O performance of small files with HCCache can be improved by factors of 34.2 and 6.1 percent in terms of aggregate I/O bandwidth and access latency, respectively. Meanwhile, HCCache can significantly reduce the lookup times of content addressable data blocks and improve the access latency for small files.