Buffer management method using buffer locking mechanism in storage

Abstract

A buffer management method using a buffer locking mechanism in a storage system for supporting a multi-user environment. The buffer hash anchor is acquired with no exclusive latch while allocation of the empty buffer is required to read a desired page into the buffer using a buffer locking chain including buffer locking entries in the form of a list. Page locking is executed only when a buffer associated with a desired page does not exist in the buffer frame chain. Accordingly, there is no interference with transactions requiring access to other pages. It is also possible to prevent the buffer hash anchor from using an exclusive latch for a lengthy period of time due to other transactions concurrently requiring allocation of empty buffers. Therefore, there is no degradation in performance of the entire system. Since the page locking is executed only for a page read from the disk, the overhead required for the page locking is minimized. As a result, management of buffers can be efficiently achieved without unnecessary disk input/output operations, thereby improving the performance of the storage system.