write-offloading · research · also write offloading

Write off-loading

Write off-loading temporarily redirects a volume's writes to other persistent storage so its disks can remain spun down.

The FAST 2008 design acknowledges writes after persisting data and version metadata. Reclamation returns blocks home; the latest logged version is invalidated only after older versions, protecting recovery from stale data. [1]

Loggers introduce availability dependencies. Reads of blocks not off-loaded can still wake the home volume. [1]

Relations

related
Massive array of idle disks, Power-aware coding, Write-back cache

Limitations

  • The evaluation replayed real I/O but emulated power states; its energy savings are not wall-meter measurements. [1]

Citations

  1. Dushyanth Narayanan, Austin Donnelly and Antony Rowstron. Write Off-Loading: Practical Power Management for Enterprise Storage. FAST 2008, sections 2-4 and 6. (accessed 2026-11-09)

Further reading

  1. Hesela: sleeping disks, write off-loading and measurement boundaries (accessed 2026-11-09)

JSON: /data/terms/write-offloading.json

Published by Hesela team · Updated

Report a correction · Editorial standards · Reuse guidance

Cite this page
Hesela team. Write off-loading. Hesela. 2026-11-09. https://hesela.dev/terms/write-offloading/