Why are state-of-the-art flash-based multi-tiered storage systems performing poorly for HTTP video streaming?

  • Authors:

  • Moonkyung Ryu;Hyojun Kim;Umakishore Ramachandran

  • Affiliations:

  • Georgia Institute of Technology, ATLANTA, GA, USA;Georgia Institute of Technology, ATLANTA, GA, USA;Georgia Institute of Technology, ATLANTA, GA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 22nd international workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

MLC flash memory is a promising technology for building a high-performance and cost-effective video streaming system when it is used as an intermediate level cache in a multi-tiered storage hierarchy. Therefore, we were quite surprised when through extensive measurements we found that two state-of-the-art flash-based multi-tiered storage systems (namely, flashcache and ZFS) have quite disappointing performance for HTTP video streaming using the DASH protocol. We have conducted a thorough analysis to understand the reasons for the poor performance of these two systems. In a nutshell, unless attention is paid to the unique performance characteristics of flash memory-based SSDs, we could end up with suboptimal or even poor performance as we discovered through experimentation with these two systems. Based on the analysis, we present design guidelines for building a cost-effective high-performance HTTP video streaming server.