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Paper 6

Trading Capacity for Performance in a Disk Array

Xiang Yu and Randy Wang

Princeton University

A variety of performance-enhancing techniques, such as striping, mirroring, and rotational data replication, exist in the disk array literature. Given a fixed budget of disks, one must intelligently choose what combination of these techniques to employ. In this work, we present a way of designing disk arrays that can flexibly and systematically reduce seek and rotational delay in a balanced manner. We give analytical models that can guide an array designer towards optimal configurations by considering both disk and workload characteristics. We have implemented a prototype disk array that incorporates the configuration models. In the process, we have also developed a robust disk head position prediction mechanism without any hardware support. The resulting prototype demonstrates the effectiveness of the configuration models.

 
 

 

Last Update: 11/16/2000