FastCommit: Resource-Efficient and Cost-Effective File System Journaling - USENIX ATC '24

Explore a groundbreaking approach to file system journaling in this award-winning conference talk from USENIX ATC '24. Dive into FastCommit, a hybrid journaling method for Ext4 that addresses the resource-intensive nature of JBD2, the current physical journaling mechanism. Learn how FastCommit combines logical journaling for common file system modifications with JBD2 for complex, infrequent changes. Discover key design elements such as compact logging, selective flushing, and inline journaling that enable over 80% of commits to be contained within a single 4KB block and written to disk without expensive cache flush operations. Understand how FastCommit reduces throughput interference by over 2× and improves performance by up to 120%. Gain insights into the implementation process and successful integration into the upstream Linux kernel. This 21-minute presentation by Google researchers Harshad Shirwadkar, Saurabh Kadekodi, and Theodore Tso offers valuable knowledge for developers and system administrators seeking to optimize file system performance and resource utilization.