The RAID configuration tool

Author

Zabback, Peter ; Menon, Jai ; Riegel, Jeff

Author_Institution

Tandem Comput. Inc., Cupertino, CA, USA

fYear

1996

fDate

19-22 Dec 1996

Firstpage

55

Lastpage

61

Abstract

Disk Arrays or RAIDs are a widely accepted I/O system architecture, useful for a wide range of applications. Before a RAID can be used, one needs to configure the RAID to select parameters such as the RAID level to use, the stripe unit to use, how large a cache to use, and so on. Selecting these configuration parameters can be quite complex, yet no aids are available today to help the user configure his RAID. The optimal selection of the parameters strongly depends on the specific workload characteristics of the application. In this paper we describe a configuration tool called Raidtool which is intended to support the systems designer in the selection of the configuration parameters. Our approach consists of three basic steps. The first step is to collect a trace of I/Os while running one or more typical applications. In the second step, this trace data is analyzed to determine the workload characteristics of the applications. In the third and final step, we use a simulator to evaluate the different RAID controller configurations

Keywords

magnetic disc storage; storage management; systems analysis; Disk Arrays; RAID configuration; RAID controller; Raidtool; configuration tool; trace data; workload characteristics; Bandwidth; Character generation; Computer architecture; Computer buffers; Data analysis; Nonvolatile memory; Process design; Random access memory; Size control; Software tools;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

High Performance Computing, 1996. Proceedings. 3rd International Conference on

Conference_Location

Trivandrum

Print_ISBN

0-8186-7557-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HIPC.1996.565797

Filename

565797