Parallax: virtual disks for virtual machines

Parallax is a distributed storage system that uses virtualization to provide storage facilities specifically for virtual environments. The system employs a novel architecture in which storage features that have traditionally been implemented directly on high-end storage arrays and switches are relocated into a federation of storage VMs, sharing the same physical hosts as the VMs that they serve. This architecture retains the single administrative domain and OS agnosticism achieved by array- and switch-based approaches, while lowering the bar on hardware requirements and facilitating the development of new features. Parallax offers a comprehensive set of storage features including frequent, low-overhead snapshot of virtual disks, the “gold-mastering” of template images, and the ability to use local disks as a persistent cache to dampen burst demand on networked storage. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.4.2 [Operating Systems]: Storage Management—Storage Hierarchies; D.4.7 [O...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: EUROSYS
• Authors: Dutch T. Meyer, Gitika Aggarwal, Brendan Cully, Geoffrey Lefebvre, Michael J. Feeley, Norman C. Hutchinson, Andrew Warfield
• Keywords: EUROSYS 2008, Storage Features, Storage Management—Storage Hierarchies, Storage Vms, System Software