RAID-x: a new distributed disk array for I/O-centric cluster computing

Author

Hwang, Kai ; Jin, Hai ; Ho, Roy

Author_Institution

Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

fYear

2000

fDate

2000

Firstpage

279

Lastpage

286

Abstract

A new RAID-x (redundant array of inexpensive disks at level x) architecture is presented for distributed I/O processing on a serverless cluster of computers. The RAID-x architecture is based on a new concept of orthogonal striping and mirroring (OSM) across all distributed disks in the cluster. The primary advantages of this OSM approach lie in: (1) a significant improvement in parallel I/O bandwidth; (2) hiding disk mirroring overhead in the background; and (3) greatly enhanced scalability and reliability in cluster computing applications. All claimed advantages are substantiated with benchmark performance results on the Trojans cluster built at USC in 1999. The authors discuss the issues of scalable I/O performance, enhanced system reliability, and striped checkpointing on distributed RAID-x in a serverless cluster environment

Keywords

RAID; distributed memory systems; distributed processing; input-output programs; parallel memories; workstation clusters; I/O-centric cluster computing; OSM approach; RAID-x; Trojans cluster; benchmark performance results; cluster computing applications; disk mirroring overhead; distributed I/O processing; distributed disk array; enhanced system reliability; orthogonal striping and mirroring; parallel I/O bandwidth; redundant array of inexpensive disks at level x; scalable I/O performance; serverless cluster; serverless cluster environment; striped checkpointing; Bandwidth; Checkpointing; Computer applications; Computer architecture; Concurrent computing; Distributed computing; Linux; Packaging; Reliability; Scalability;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

High-Performance Distributed Computing, 2000. Proceedings. The Ninth International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Pittsburgh, PA

ISSN

1082-8907

Print_ISBN

0-7695-0783-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HPDC.2000.868660

Filename

868660