Dr. Darrell Long

A Flexible Simulation Tool for Estimating Data Loss Risks in Storage Arrays

Proceedings of the Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies (MSST)

May 2013View full paper

Abstract

Proteus is an open-source simulation program that can predict the risk of data loss in many disk array configurations, among which, mirrored disks, all levels of RAID arrays and various two-dimensional RAID arrays. It characterizes each array by five numbers, namely, the size n of the array, the number nf of simultaneous disk failures the array will always tolerate without data loss, and the respective fractions f1, f2 and f3 of simultaneous failures of nf + 1, nf + 2 and nf + 3 disks that will not result in a data loss. As with any simulation tool, Proteus imposes no restriction on the distributions of failure and repair events. Our measurements have shown a surprisingly good agreement with the results obtained through analytical techniques and no measurable difference between values obtained assuming deterministic repair times and those assuming exponential repair times.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{kao-msst13,
  author       = {Hsu-Wan Kao and Jehan-Fran\c{c}ois P\^aris and Thomas Schwarz, S.J. and Darrell D. E. Long},
  title        = {A Flexible Simulation Tool for Estimating Data Loss Risks in Storage Arrays},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies (MSST)},
  organization = {IEEE},
  address      = {Long Beach},
  pages        = {1--5},
  month        = may,
  year         = {2013},
  doi          = {10.1109/MSST.2013.6558435}
}
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