Multi-stage log-structured (MSLS) designs, such as LevelDB, RocksDB, HBase, and Cassandra, are a family of storage system designs that exploit the high sequential write speeds of hard disks and flash drives by using multiple append-only data structures. As a first step towards accurate and fast evaluation of MSLS, we propose new analytic primitives and MSLS design models that quickly give accurate performance estimates. Our model can almost perfectly estimate the cost of inserts in LevelDB,
Hyeontaek Lim, David G. Andersen, Michael Kaminsky