Methods and apparatus for providing service differentiation in a shared storage environment

摘要

Apparatus and techniques for automatically allocating storage space among classes of applications and/or users in a shared storage environment are proposed. In one illustrative embodiment, such apparatus includes: (i) a plurality of per-class controllers, each per-class controller being operative to determine a cache space allocation for its corresponding class based on a current measured hit rate and a current cache space allocation for its corresponding class; and (ii) a contention resolver coupled to the plurality of per-class controllers and operative to resolve cache space allocation in response to conflicting requests from at least two of the per-class controllers. The apparatus may also include a fairness controller coupled to the plurality of per-class controllers and the contention resolver for computing a fair cache allocation share of each class based on a current performance estimate and a target hit rate of each class, wherein the fairness controller adjusts the target hit rate of each class that the per-class controller is to track.