A user-space file system for on-demand legacy desktop software

Abstract

Some user-level virtualization technologies have been used to convert legacy software (like the existing Windows desktop applications) into the on-demand software without any modification. To give the client a friendly and compatible method to access on-demand legacy software across the Internet, this paper presents a client-end file system for this usage case. It is a Windows user-space file system based on the cloud storage (where the on-demand software is stored), which converts the local file system accesses into remote visits. Quite a few optimizations are adopted and adjusted to suit the file-access-pattern of on-demand software, including the local cache, metadata/data/software pre-fetch and content-addressable storage (CAS), to decrease the number of remote visits and/or to overlap IO (input/output) operations with software execution. Detailed access-pattern analyses are also presented. This file system has been implemented and tests show that it is practical for much daily-used software—a local cache of limited size can provide up to 80% hit ratio and the corresponding overhead of running-time is about 37%. Owing to this method, on any compatible and networked computer, a user can use his/her personalized software conveniently although it does not exist on the local host.