Design and analysis of block-level snapshots for data protection and recovery
Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
12-1-2009
Abstract
This paper presents a comprehensive study on implementations and performance evaluations of two snapshot techniques: copy-on-write snapshot and redirect-on-write snapshot. We develop a simple Markov process model to analyze data block behavior and its impact on application performance, while the snapshot operation is underway at the block-level storage. We have implemented the two snapshots techniques on both Windows and Linux operating systems. Based on our analytical model and our implementation, we carry out quantitative performance evaluations and comparisons of the two snapshot techniques using IoMeter, PostMark, TPC-C, and TPC-W benchmarks. Our measurements reveal many interesting observations regarding the performance characteristics of the two snapshot techniques. Depending on the applications and different I/O workloads, the two snapshot techniques perform quite differently. In general, copy-on-write performs well on read-intensive applications, while redirect-on-write performs well on writeintensive applications. © 2009 IEEE.
Publication Title, e.g., Journal
IEEE Transactions on Computers
Volume
58
Issue
12
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Xiao, Weijun, Qing Yang, Jin Ren, Changsheng Xie, and Huaiyang Li. "Design and analysis of block-level snapshots for data protection and recovery." IEEE Transactions on Computers 58, 12 (2009): 1615-1625. doi: 10.1109/TC.2009.107.