Dynamic feedback-based throughput control for black-box storage systems

A system comprising:

• a rate controller receiving a plurality of I/O requests, the rate controller comprising a plurality of token buckets and selecting a token bucket from the plurality of token buckets based on a service class of each of the plurality of I/O requests;
• a storage system, the storage system receiving the I/O request from the rate controller at a control rate;
• a control loop observing throughput of the storage system and dynamically adjusting the control rate based on the variance between the observed throughput of the storage system and the control rate, wherein adjusting the control rate comprises
• determining a minimum throughput reservation for each service class, and
• allocating throughput capacity to each service class proportional to its throughput reservation.

A computer program product for storage throughput control, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program code embodied therewith, the program code executable by a processor to:

• receive a plurality of I/O requests at a rate controller, the rate controller comprising a plurality of token buckets;
• select a token bucket from the plurality of token buckets based on a service class of each of the plurality of I/O requests;
• send the plurality of I/O requests from the rate controller to a storage system at a control rate;
• observe throughput of the storage system;
• and
• dynamically adjust the control rate based on the variance between the observed throughput of the storage system and the control rate, wherein adjusting the control rate comprises
• determining a minimum throughput reservation for each service class, and
• allocating throughput capacity to each service class proportional to its throughput reservation.