The DiskSim Simulation Environment Version 4.0 Reference Manual (CMU-PDL-08-101)

TLDR

DiskSim is an efficient, accurate, and highly configurable disk system simulator designed to support research into various aspects of storage subsystem architecture. This manual explains how to configure and use DiskSim, which is publicly available to advance state‑of‑the‑art disk system performance evaluation in the research community. DiskSim includes modules for disks, intermediate controllers, buses, device drivers, request schedulers, disk block caches, disk array organizations, and a MEMS‑based storage device, and the manual briefly describes its internal structure and validation results. The disk drive module simulates modern drives in great detail and has been validated against several production disks with accuracy exceeding any previously reported simulator, and the manual documents these validation results and the system’s overall performance capabilities.

Abstract

DiskSim is an efficient, accurate and highly-configurable disk system simulator developed to support research into various aspects of storage subsystem architecture. It includes modules that simulate disks, intermediate controllers, buses, device drivers, request schedulers, disk block caches, and disk array data organizations. In particular, the disk drive module simulates modern disk drives in great detail and has been carefully validated against several production disks (with accuracy that exceeds any previously reported simulator). It also includes a MEMS-based storage device module. This manual describes how to configure and use DiskSim, which has been made publicly available with the hope of advancing the state-of-the-art in disk system performance evaluation in the research community. The manual also briefly describes DiskSim’s internal structure and various validation results.