Skip to main content
Log in

Data striping and reliability aspects in distributed video servers

Cluster Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

To provide the required amount of storage and bandwidth, a video server typically comprises a large number of disks. As the total number of disks increases, the influence of the striping algorithm that determines how video data are distributed across the disks becomes decisive in terms of overall server cost and performance. Also introducing fault-tolerance against disk failures becomes a must. In this paper, we first evaluate different striping algorithms in terms of throughput, buffer requirement, and start-up latency for a non-fault-tolerant server. We then examine the impact of data striping on a fault-tolerant server and show that the striping policy and the optimal technique to assure fault-tolerance are related: Depending on the technique used to assure fault-tolerance (mirroring or parity), different striping techniques perform best.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. S.A. Barnett, G.J. Anido and P. Beadle, Predective call admission control for a disk array based video server, in: Proc. Multimedia Computing and Networking, San Jose, CA (February 1997) pp. 240, 251.

  2. C. Bernhardt and E.W. Biersack, The server array: A scalable video server architecture, in: High-Speed Networking for Multimedia Applications, eds. W. Effelsberg, O. Spaniol, A. Danthine and D. Ferrari (Kluwer, Amsterdam, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  3. S. Berson, L. Golubchik and R.R. Muntz, Fault tolerant design of multimedia servers, in: Proc. SIGMOD '95, San Jose, CA (May 1995) pp. 364-375.

  4. S. Berson, R. Muntz, S. Ghandeharizadeh and X. Ju, Staggered striping in multimedia information systems, in: Proc. ACM-SIGMOD Conference (1994).

  5. E.W. Biersack and J. Gafsi, Combined raid 5 and mirroring for cost-optimal fault-tolerant video servers, to appear in: Multimedia Tools and Applications (1998).

  6. Y. Birk, Random raids with selective exploitation of redundancy for high performance video servers, in: NOSSDAV '97, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer, New York, 1997).

    Google Scholar 

  7. W. Bolosky et al., The tiger video fileserver, in: Proc. 6th Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video, Zushi, Japan (April 1996).

  8. M.-S. Chen et al., Using rotational mirrored declustering for replica placement in a disk-array-based video server, Multimedia Systems 5 (December 1997) 371-379.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. P.M. Chen, E.K. Lee, G.A. Gibson, R.H. Katz and D.A. Patterson, Raid: high-performance, reliable secondary storage, ACM Comput. Surv. 26 (June 1994) 145-185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. A. Cohen and W. Burkhard, Segmented information dispersal (SID) for efficient reconstruction in fault-tolerant video servers, in: Proc. ACM Multimedia 1996, Boston, MA (November 1996) pp. 277-286.

  11. J. Dengler, C. Bernhardt and E. Biersack, Deterministic admission control strategies in video servers with variable bit rate streams, in: Proc. of the European Workshop on Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems and Services, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer, New York, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  12. J. Gafsi and E. Biersack, Impact of buffer sharing in multiple disk video server architecture, in: Proc. of the 6th Open Workshop on High Speed Networks, Stuttgart, Germany (October 1997).

  13. J. Gafsi and E.W. Biersack, Comparison of shared and dedicated buffer management strategies, Technical Report, Institut Eurecom (1997).

  14. S. Ghandeharizadeh and S.H. Kim, Striping in multi-disk video servers, in: Proc. High-Density Data Recording and Retrieval Technologies Conference, SPIE (October 1995).

  15. S. Ghandeharizadeh and H.K. Seon, Striping in multi-disk video servers, in: Proc. of the SPIE International Symposium on Photonics Technologies and Systems for Voice, Video, and Data Communications (1995).

  16. M. Holland, G. Gibson and D. Siewiorek, Architectures and algorithms for on-line failure recovery in redundant disk arrays, J. Distributed Parallel Databases 2 (July 1994).

  17. A. Mourad, Issues in the design of a storage server for video-on-demand, Multimedia Systems 4(2) (1996) 70-86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. A. Mourad, Doubly-striped disk mirroring: Reliable storage for video servers, Multimedia, Tools and Applications 2 (May 1996) 253-272.

    Google Scholar 

  19. B. Ozden et al., Fault-tolerant architectures for continuous media servers, in: SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data '96 (June 1996) pp. 79-90.

  20. B. Ozden et al., Disk striping in video server environments, in: Proc. IEEE Conf. on Multimedia Systems, Hiroshima, Japan (June 1996) pp. 580-589.

  21. J.Y. Raymond and T. Ng, An analysis of buffer sharing and prefetching techniques for multimedia systems, Multimedia Systems (1996).

  22. P. Shenoy and H. Vin, Efficient striping techniques for multimedia file servers, in: NOSSDAV '97, ed. G. Parulkar (May 1997).

  23. R. Tewari, D.M. Dias, W. Kish and H. Vin, High availability for clustered multimedia servers, in: Proc. International Conference on Data Engineering, New Orleans, LA (February 1996).

  24. R. Tewari, D.M. Dias, W. Kish and H. Vin, Design and performance tradeoffs in clustered video servers, in: Proc. IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems (ICMCS '96), Hiroshima (June 1996) pp. 144-150.

  25. F.A. Tobagi, J. Pang, R. Baird and M. Gang, Streaming raid(tm) — a disk array management system for video files, in: Proc. 1st ACM International Conference on Multimedia, Anaheim, CA (August 1993).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Gafsi, J., Biersack, E.W. Data striping and reliability aspects in distributed video servers. Cluster Computing 2, 75–91 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019054003646

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019054003646

Keywords

Navigation