Exploring remote memory for buffer cache extension: a preliminary investigation

Data-intensive and memory-intensive applications demand high performance from buffer caches to efficiently manage large datasets and minimize access latencies. Traditional buffer caches, confined within a single machine’s expensive DRAM, encounter limitations in capacity and scalability, leading to performance bottlenecks as a result of costly disk fetches. Conversely, datacenters often face underutilization challenges. By circumventing traditional network protocol overheads, RDMA offers low-latency, high-throughput access to remote memory pools, thereby minimizing performance penalties. This study investigates the integration of RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) with buffer caches to overcome these challenges. RDMA enables memory disaggregation, allowing buffer cache capacities to extend beyond individual machine constraints by leveraging memory resources across multiple servers. This study assesses the efficacy of RDMA-enabled disaggregated buffer caches in enhancing application operations by expanding distributed capacity, leading to improved performance characterized by reduced latency for file accesses and enhanced throughput. This thesis serves as a preliminary study and demonstrates seamless integration with existing applications, eliminating the need for modifications to the application stack. Performance evaluation using various data-intensive POSIX application-level databases, such as LevelDB, SQLite, RocksDB, and WiredTiger, illustrates significant reductions in access latencies, enhancements in throughput, and improvements in cache hit rates. These findings affirm the viability of RDMA-based buffer caching for read-intensive operations in data center environments. Furthermore, this research paves the way for exploring support for complex read-write operations and expanding the scope of memory disaggregation applications, promising widespread adoption and adaptation in various computing environments requiring optimal performance from buffer caches.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Bygari, Ramya

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ganesan, Aishwarya
• Alagappan, Ramnatthan

• Distributed Systems
• Storage Systems
• Buffer Cache
• Remote Memory
• Disaggregated Memory
• Rdma

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Ramya Bygari

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124717

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F124717