DFS-Haystack

October 6, 2021 · 1284 words · 7 min · DFS Paper Reading Distributed System

The primary project in my group is a distributed file system (DFS) that provides POSIX file system semantics. The approach to handle “lots of small files” (LOSF) is inspired by Haystack, which is specifically designed for small files. I decided to read through the Haystack paper and take some notes as a learning exercise. These notes are not an in-depth analysis of specific details but rather a record of my thoughts on the problem and design approach.

MIT6.824 Bigtable

September 16, 2021 · 1908 words · 9 min · Paper Reading MIT6.824 DFS Distributed System

I recently found a translated version of the Bigtable paper online and saved it, but hadn’t gotten around to reading it. Lately, I’ve noticed that Bigtable shares many design similarities with a current project in our group, so I took some time over the weekend to read through it. This is the last of Google’s three foundational distributed system papers, and although it wasn’t originally part of the MIT6.824 reading list, I’ve categorized it here for consistency.