The DiskSim Simulation Environment
(v4.0)
[ People | Status | v4.0
Code Download | Mailing Lists ]
DiskSim v4.0 includes bug fixes and three primary additions: the DIXtrac
disk characterization tool [Schindler99], a MEMS-based storage device
model [Griffin00, Schlosser03], and a new layout model generic enough for
all logical-to-physical mappings that we have seen.
DiskSim is an efficient, accurate, highly-configurable disk system
simulator originally developed at the University of Michigan and enhanced at
CMU to support research into various aspects of storage subsystem
architecture. It is written in C and requires no special system software
(just basic POSIX interfaces). DiskSim includes modules for most secondary
storage components of interest, including device drivers, buses, controllers,
adapters, and disk drives. DiskSim also includes support for a number
of externally-provided trace formats and internally-generated synthetic
workloads, and includes hooks for inclusion in a larger scale system-level
simulator. It has been used in a variety of published studies (and
several unpublished studies) to understand modern storage subsystem
performance [Ganger93a,
Worthington94],
to understand how storage performance relates to overall system performance
[Ganger93,
Ganger95,
Ganger95a],
and to evaluate new storage subsystem architectures [Worthington95a].
DiskSim has been validated both as part of a more comprehensive system-level
model and as a standalone subsystem. In particular, the disk module
(which is extremely detailed) has been carefully validated against 10
different disk models from 5 different manufacturers. The accuracy demonstrated
exceeds that of any other disk simulator known to the authors (e.g.,
see Ruemmler and Wilkes' article in the March 1994 issue of IEEE Computer).
Parameters for some disks against which we have validated DiskSim
are included with the source code release (see below). For 4 of these
disks, the parameters were extracted by a set of semi-automated, on-line
algorithms described in [Worthington95,
Worthington96].
For another 5 disks, the parameters were extracted automatically by
a disk characterization tool called
DIXtrac. Additional DIXtrac-provided parameters are
added periodically to our on-line database
of disk parameters.
A fairly complete description of what DiskSim can do and how to use
it can be found in the Reference Manual below.
People
Revision Authors: John Bucy, Jiri Schindler, Steve
Schlosser,
Greg Ganger
Contributors: John Griffin
Original Authors: Greg Ganger,
Bruce Worthington
and Yale Patt
NOTE: Instead of contacting the authors directly to find out more, or comment on disksim, please send mail to
.
Status
DiskSim has been made freely available in order to further storage
system research (and computer system research that in some way includes
the storage system). All we ask is that you let us know, if and when
you can, that you are using and what kind of fabulous things you do
with it.
- Version 4.0 code and documentation
- DiskSim 4.0 source code - *new tarball - updated on 6/23/2008
gzip'd tar file [4.9M]
- DiskSim 4.0 with DIXtrac source code - *new tarball - updated on 6/23/2008
gzip'd tar file [7.6M]
- Version 4.0 Reference Manual
PDF [704K]
The reference manual for DiskSim version 4.0 has been published
as Carnegie Mellon University Technical Report CMU-PDL-08-101,
May 2008.
- Copyright and Disclaimers
Please send bug reports, experiences, and problems to
.
If you find disksim useful, please let us know about it!
Mailing Lists
There are two public mailing lists for DiskSim:
These mailing lists are moderated such that only subscribers can post; please subscribe before mailing the list.
An archive of past disksim email list posts is available at http://sos.ece.cmu.edu/pipermail/disksim/.
Acknowledgements
We thank the members and companies of the PDL Consortium: American Power Conversion, Cisco Systems, EMC,
Google, Hewlett-Packard Labs,
Hitachi,
IBM,
Intel,
LSI, Network Appliance,
Oracle,
Panasas,
Seagate Technology, and Symantec for
their interest, insights, feedback, and support.
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