The project will investigate a low-cost buffer cache solution for improving performance of iSCSI end systems over Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA). The use of RDMA protocols in modern storage networking architectures can reduce CPU overhead and performance loss due to the multiple memory-copy problem for end systems. An iSCSI-based IP storage architecture over RDMA can provide cost-effectiveness and high-performance.
There are significant challenges in smoothing out the disparities between iSCSI protocol and RDMA model, and reducing performance loss due to inefficient memory utilization. This research addresses these problems by conducting the following activities: 1) developing a unified buffer cache hardware/software architecture for iSCSI applications over RDMA protocol suite on both client and server sides by reducing the number of data packet translations across iSCSI and RDMA boundaries; and 2) developing propagate update protocols to resolve cache RDMA read and write failure problems.
