Congestion-aware iSCSI virtualization storage system

An iSCSI storage system with a resources management framework called CA-iSCSI was developed. The framework manages the main resources, including the network status, the memory of the clients, and the cache and the forwarding bandwidth of the switch. It can adaptively adjust both the traffic control parameters to improve application-perceived performance directly, thus avoiding the rise of the packet loss ratio and the crash of the system throughput caused by the overload of the switch. The CA-iSCSI employs congestion pricing via online auctions for the clients to coordinate the use of the switch resources. The experimental results show that the CA-iSCSI results in a 12% improvement in throughput when compared with the original system for a real workload.