Effective memory use in a media server

A number of techniques have been developed for maximizing disk utilization in media servers, in-cluding disk arm scheduling and data placement ones. Instead, in this paper we focus on how to ef-ficiently utilize the available memory. We present techniques for best memory use under different disk policies, and derive precise formulas for computing memory use. We show that with proper memory use, maximizing disk utilization does not neces-sarily lead to optimal throughput. In addition, we study the impact of data placement policies includ-ing disk partitioning and multiple disks. Finally, our analysis shows that maximizing disk utilization and disk striping incur high system costs, and are not advisable in a media server.