Efficient Striping Techniques for Multimedia File Servers

In this paper, we describe techniques for determining the stripe unit size and the degree of striping for efficient placement of continuous media data on disk arrays. To determine the stripe unit size, we present analytical models that use the server configuration and the workload characteristics to predict the load on the most heavily loaded disk in redundant and non-redundant arrays. We use these models to evaluate the effect of various system parameters on the optimal stripe unit size. We also present procedures for determining the optimal stripe unit size for various design scenarios. We demonstrate that striping a continuous media object across all disks in the array causes the number of clients supported to increase sub-linearly with increase in the number of disks. To maximize the number of clients supported in large arrays, we present a technique that partitions a disk array and stripes each media stream across a single partition. Since load imbalance can occur in such partitio..