Systems and methods for tracking working-set estimates with a limited resource budget

Embodiments of the systems and techniques described here can leverage several insights into the nature of workload access patterns and the working-set behavior to reduce the memory overheads. As a result, various embodiments make it feasible to maintain running estimates of a workload's cacheability in current storage systems with limited resources. For example, some embodiments provide for a method comprising estimating cacheability of a workload based on a first working-set size estimate generated from the workload over a first monitoring interval. Then, based on the cacheability of the workload, a workload cache size can be determined. A cache then can be dynamically allocated (e.g., change, possibly frequently, the cache allocation for the workload when the current allocation and the desired workload cache size differ), within a storage system for example, in accordance with the workload cache size.