Interrelationships of Performance

File systems, database systems, and storage systems are interrelated and dictate levels of performance for the storage infrastructure. File systems, for their part, form the basis for efficient and effective access to an applications data. Problems occur, however, when the file system is doing its job with unoptimized disks, insufficient disk space, or bandwidth constraints in the bus. As application performance becomes problematic , the file system attributes should be considered for better alignment with the available storage infrastructure.

Many relational databases dont use an operating systems file system at all. Given thats the case in many database instances, then what substitutes the functionality of the file system within the database? Actually, many database systems interact closely with installed storage systems through the use of their own file system and virtual I/O manager.

Finally, many applications rely on the interaction of files that are networked. This provides yet another dimension to the interrelationship of the file system to storage and the challenges to the integrity and reliability of the data stored within a network.

Virtualization Times Three

Data organizational methods begin the first slide into the confusion of virtualization. This is because File Systems provide a layer of abstraction to the physical location of data, the location of disks, and the storage media itself. Database systems further abstract the physical data, physical location, and the actual data. Finally, the application using both organizational methods will further hide (for example, virtualize ) the complexities of finding and managing the data. In many cases, we are left with the question of where the actual data is.

The operating system component that encompasses the allocation of space, data structures, and which keeps track of these organizational storage criteria is the File System. File Systems operate within the I/O manager component of the OS. In most operating systems, such as UNIX and Windows, the file system operates as a driver or an additional service that will interact with the OSs I/O management component. This allows multiple file systems to simultaneously operate on a single server.