Ganger

Proceedings of the ACM Sigmetrics Conference, May 1995.

Bruce L. Worthington, Gregory R. Ganger, Yale N. Patt, John Wilkes*

Dept. of EECS, Univ. of Michigan
* Hewlett-Packard Laboratories  

Sophisticated disk scheduling algorithms require accuate, detailed disk drive specifications, including data about mechanical delays, on-board caching and prefetching algorithms, command and protocol overheads, and logical-to-physical block mappings. Comprehensive disk models used in storage subsystem design require similar levels of detail. We describe a suite of general-purpose algorithms and techniques for acquiring the necessary information from a SCSI disk drive. Using only the ANSI-standard interface, we demonstrate how the important parameter values of a modern SCSI drive can be determined accurately and efficiently.

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