NDM-Cache: A Network Cache for Cloud Computing System

Block-level storage service is one of the basic services in a cloud computing system, it not only provides block-level storage volumes to the virtual machines for persistent data, but also improve the availability of data. However, with the rapid expansion of cloud computing systems and increasing number of the virtual machines, higher I/O performance of storage subsystem is demanded, when the storage subsystem under the condition of high load, its service quality is severely affected. According to this issue, this paper designs and implements the prototype of a network cache for cloud computing system, named NDM-Cache. This network cache system uses local block device as L1 cache, the block devices of other hosts in LAN as L2 cache, and proposes a data management solution for network cache system. On this basis, for the host with a spare memory space, we propose a double level cache optimization strategy to further enhance the overall system performance. The experimental results of prototype system show that in the case of high load storage subsystem, the network cache system can effectively improve the performance of storage system