Combining Replication And Parity Approaches For Fault-Tolerant Disk Arrays

In this paper, we explore the method of combining the replication and parity approaches to tolerate multiple disk failures in a disk array. In addition to the conventional mirrored and chained declustering methods, a method based on the hybrid of mirrored-andchained declustering is explored. A performance study that explores the effect of combining replication and parity approaches is conducted. It is experimentally shown that the proposed approach can lead to the most cost-effective solution if the objective is to sustain the same load as before the failures. Index Terms: Chained declustering, hybrid mirrored-and-chained declustering, fault-tolerance. 1 Introduction Disk arrays, especially those with Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), have recently emerged as a powerful means to provide large data storages with high throughputs, reliability, and fractional costs of large disks [11]. Various studies have been conducted to evaluate and enhance the performance of disk arrays ..