I'm reading a paper on LSM (log structured merge files) and related LDS files. The paper makes the point that while applications may logically append only to a file with the desire for contiguous append-writes, the file system and/or need to make new files for overflow in fact may cause the HDD/SDD to incur random or at least non-sequential writes in or across those files. Consequently some throughput is lost.
Question: under Linux is it possible to reserve a block of the hard-disk such that the application can definitely append only write in that block? Oracle, for example, may do this. This scheme by-passes some of the typical filesystem APIs and allows applications to better control where the writes go.