Customizable file-type aware cache mechanism

摘要

A caching mechanism is provided in a computer server system including at least one host coupled to at least one disk, one or more virtual machines, one or more images of the one or more virtual machines created in a file system of the disk, and a virtual machine manager for assigning hardware resources of the computer server system to the one or more virtual machines. The mechanism provides a masking cache layer between the one or more virtual machines and the virtual machine manager, the masking cache layer including at least one separate entry for every cacheable data block of the file system to be referenced, collects profiling information related to one or more of the cacheable data blocks (58) and stores the profiling information in the masking cache layer and configures the masking cache layer according to the profiling information, or provides a configuration for the masking cache layer.

主权项

1. A caching method comprising:
providing a masking cache layer between one or more virtual machines and a virtual machine manager, the masking cache layer including at least one separate entry for each cacheable data block of a disk file system to be referenced; collecting file-type-aware profiling information related to one or more of the cacheable data blocks based on file types of the one or more the cacheable data blocks; storing the file-type-aware profiling information in the masking cache layer; and configuring the masking cache layer according to the file-type-aware profiling information.