A Novel Network RAID Architecture with Out-of-Band Virtualization and Redundant Management

The paper presents a novel network RAID storage system based on the out-of-band virtualization architecture and the backend centralized redundant management. The application servers can inquire the mapping information of virtual disk from the out-of-band virtualization server and directly access the storage nodes. The read request can fetch the data from special storage node, while the write request is not only stored into the storage node, and also mirrored into the redundant server by the storage node. The redundant server can cache updated data in local disks with log-structured mode, and calculate the parity of RAID5 in the background process when the system is idle. It relieves the bottle problem of I/O performance and low reliability danger of single controller in the front-end centralized management system. And the layout of RAID1/RAID5 on the data block has acquired the trade-off among performance, reliability and cost.