An Efficient Disk Resource Management Mechanism for Scalable Disconnected Access to Web Services*

This paper examines the importance of requiring a disk resource management mechanism for disconnected services and presents a robust system that embodies several features that are required of such a disconnected framework. Disconnected services in which clients access services in degraded mode (i.e without relying on network connectivity) are important for providing greater service availability to potential clients. Because much of the content that requires connectivity is not cacheable, there is a trend towards downloading code that is “untrusted”, one that may place limitless demands on the resources available to the client. Although such resource management has a broad area of application, this paper takes a look at disk resource management for write buffering, where data are stored for disconnected services with the intent that they will be evacuated at a later time. In this paper we explore a perservice popularity algorithm to address the write buffering problem effectively. In doing so, we present a system that implements an ‘automatic’ disk resource management policy and examine how it performs relative to the more rudimentary techniques already in use. As a result, we discuss how our system provides greater service availability by allowing flexibility in the introduction of new services while also providing greater disk access to existing ones.