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A user-space file system for on-demand legacy desktop software

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Abstract

Some user-level virtualization technologies have been used to convert legacy software (like the existing Windows desktop applications) into the on-demand software without any modification. To give the client a friendly and compatible method to access on-demand legacy software across the Internet, this paper presents a client-end file system for this usage case. It is a Windows user-space file system based on the cloud storage (where the on-demand software is stored), which converts the local file system accesses into remote visits. Quite a few optimizations are adopted and adjusted to suit the file-access-pattern of on-demand software, including the local cache, metadata/data/software pre-fetch and content-addressable storage (CAS), to decrease the number of remote visits and/or to overlap IO (input/output) operations with software execution. Detailed access-pattern analyses are also presented. This file system has been implemented and tests show that it is practical for much daily-used software—a local cache of limited size can provide up to 80% hit ratio and the corresponding overhead of running-time is about 37%. Owing to this method, on any compatible and networked computer, a user can use his/her personalized software conveniently although it does not exist on the local host.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    YouHui Zhang, GeLin Su & WeiMin Zheng

  2. Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    YouHui Zhang, GeLin Su & WeiMin Zheng

Authors
  1. YouHui Zhang
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  2. GeLin Su
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  3. WeiMin Zheng
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Correspondence to YouHui Zhang.

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Zhang, Y., Su, G. & Zheng, W. A user-space file system for on-demand legacy desktop software. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 54, 1142–1150 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-011-4255-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-011-4255-2

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