Using rotational mirrored declustering for replica placement in a disk-array-based video server

Abstract.

In a video-on-demand (VOD) environment, disk arrays are often used to support the disk bandwidth requirement. This can pose serious problems on available disk bandwidth upon disk failure. In this paper, we explore the approach of replicating frequently accessed movies to provide high data bandwidth and fault tolerance required in a disk-array-based video server. An isochronous continuous video stream imposes different requirements from a random access pattern on databases or files. Explicitly, we propose a new replica placement method, called rotational mirrored declustering (RMD), to support high data availability for disk arrays in a VOD environment. In essence, RMD is similar to the conventional mirrored declustering in that replicas are stored in different disk arrays. However, it is different from the latter in that the replica placements in different disk arrays under RMD are properly rotated. Combining the merits of prior chained and mirrored declustering methods, RMD is particularly suitable for storing multiple movie copies to support VOD applications. To assess the performance of RMD, we conduct a series of experiments by emulating the storage and delivery of movies in a VOD system. Our results show that RMD consistently outperforms the conventional methods in terms of load-balancing and fault-tolerance capability after disk failure, and is deemed a viable approach to supporting replica placement in a disk-array-based video server.