Premium
Experimental analysis of a mass storage system
Author(s) -
Bokhari Shahid,
Rutt Benjamin,
Wyckoff Pete,
Buerger Paul
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
concurrency and computation: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.309
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1532-0634
pISSN - 1532-0626
DOI - 10.1002/cpe.1038
Subject(s) - raid , computer science , mass storage , usable , controller (irrigation) , context (archaeology) , computer data storage , key (lock) , supercomputer , operating system , distributed computing , embedded system , paleontology , world wide web , agronomy , biology
Mass storage systems (MSSs) play a key role in data‐intensive parallel computing. Most contemporary MSSs are implemented as redundant arrays of independent/inexpensive disks (RAID) in which commodity disks are tied together with proprietary controller hardware. The performance of such systems can be difficult to predict because most internal details of the controller behavior are not public. We present a systematic method for empirically evaluating MSS performance by obtaining measurements on a series of RAID configurations of increasing size and complexity. We apply this methodology to a large MSS at Ohio Supercomputer Center that has 16 input/output processors, each connected to four 8 + 1 RAID5 units and provides 128 TB of storage (of which 116.8 TB are usable when formatted). Our methodology permits storage‐system designers to evaluate empirically the performance of their systems with considerable confidence. Although we have carried out our experiments in the context of a specific system, our methodology is applicable to all large MSSs. The measurements obtained using our methods permit application programmers to be aware of the limits to the performance of their codes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.