Efficient Online Scheduling of Data Transfers in Multi-tiered Persistent Storage

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of optimal online scheduling of data transfers among the levels of multi-tiered persistent storage systems. The paper describes the new algorithms for the optimization of data transfers and shows the important role played by multi-tiered persistent storage when processing large volumes of data. A notation of Extended Petri Nets (EPN) proposed in the paper is used to represent the data flows between the storage tiers. EPNs are also used to create efficient data transfer plans by integrating multiple queries. The paper presents new ways of online query processing with real-time constraints and shows the benefits of optimized serial data transfer plans. We conduct the evaluations of online scheduling algorithms in a simulated environment of multi-tiered persistent storage. The method was tested in a simulation that mimics real storage devices like hard disk drives (HDD), solid-state drives (SSD), and non-volatile memory (NVMe) drives, based on their usual read and write speeds. We performed extensive experiments on different storage setups, from single-tier to four-tier systems, using a variety of sample queries. The results showed that we achieved better online scheduling for data transfers in multi-tier storage systems.

Received: 24 December 2024 | Revised: 25 August 2025 | Accepted: 17 November 2025

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Author Contribution Statement

Nan Noon Noon: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Janusz R. Getta: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision. Tianbing Xia: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision.