Design of I/O server based on transparent calculation model

This paper presents the design and implementation of an I/O server based on transparent calculation model. I/O server and I/O client are two software modules of an I/O manager which is a network storage access service supporting multi-OS remote start in transparent compution environment. I/O server works on the server, and I/O client runs on the client. In transparent calculation model, the operation system of the clients is separated from the hardware, the operation system and applications which users want to use are all stored on the server. When the clients boot, I/O server and the boot protocol works together, downloads I/O client to the clients' memory, and then I/O client sends I/O requests to I/O server. I/O server analyzes the requests received and classifies the priorities, then schedules these classified requests based on the priorities to operate virtual disk files on the server, sends the results to the clients. To reduce the disk I/O, I/O server also applies prefetching and cache policy. I/O server supports the remote boot of the operation systems, and provides services for all kinds of requests as the operation system is running.