{
  "slug": "smrstore",
  "term": "SMRSTORE",
  "aliases": [],
  "definition": "SMRSTORE is a log-structured storage engine that maps chunks directly onto host-managed SMR zones in a distributed object-storage stack.",
  "note": "The FAST 2023 paper separates placement by stream type, adapts chunk-size limits to zones and uses preopened zone pools with round-robin allocation. Large chunks can occupy exclusive zones; smaller chunks still share space. Separating stream types alone was insufficient in the reported ablation. [paper]\n\nRecovery loads checkpoints and journals, then scans data zones for appends that were deliberately not journaled. Zone resets are journaled because a zone can be reused between checkpoints. [paper]",
  "limitations": [
    {
      "text": "Round-robin placement reduced small-write throughput in the clean-state microbenchmark; its later reclamation benefit is not a claim that every write becomes faster.",
      "citationIds": [
        "paper"
      ]
    },
    {
      "text": "Evaluation is tied to the OSS/Pangu stack, specific drives, SSD caches and workloads; most baseline comparisons restrict disks to 6 TB, with a separate 20 TB SMRSTORE variant.",
      "citationIds": [
        "paper"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "related": [
    "hm-smr",
    "smore"
  ],
  "citations": [
    {
      "id": "paper",
      "title": "Zhou et al. SMRSTORE: A Storage Engine for Cloud Object Storage on HM-SMR Drives. FAST 2023, pp. 395-408; sections 3.1, 5.4-5.6, 6.1-6.4 and 7.",
      "url": "https://www.usenix.org/system/files/fast23-zhou-su.pdf",
      "accessed": "2026-11-14"
    },
    {
      "id": "venue",
      "title": "USENIX FAST 2023: SMRSTORE author list and deployed-systems publication record.",
      "url": "https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast23/presentation/zhou",
      "accessed": "2026-11-14"
    },
    {
      "id": "hesela",
      "title": "Hesela: Host-Managed SMR, interface and object-store designs.",
      "url": "https://hesela.com/tech/hm-smr/",
      "accessed": "2026-11-14"
    }
  ],
  "provenance": [
    "The paper reports a historical deployment. This record does not establish current availability, reproduce its benchmark or promise equivalent behavior outside that stack."
  ],
  "status": "research",
  "advantages": [],
  "supersedes": [],
  "supersededBy": [],
  "firstSeen": null,
  "lastSeen": null,
  "updated": "2026-11-14"
}