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

Appeared in 29th IEEE Symposium on Massive Storage Systems and Technologies.

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 nof the array, the number n_f of simultaneous disk failures the array will always tolerate without data loss, and the respective fractions f₁, f₂ and f₃ of simultaneous failures of n_f + 1,n_f + 2 and n_f + 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.

For more information and program download, please read Proteus.

Publication date:
May 2013

Authors:
Hsu-Wan Kao
Jehan-François Pâris
Darrell D. E. Long
Thomas Schwarz

Projects:
Archival Storage
Reliable Storage

Available media

Full paper text: PDF

Bibtex entry

@inproceedings{kao-msst13,
  author       = {Hsu-Wan Kao and Jehan-François Pâris and Darrell D. E. Long and Thomas Schwarz},
  title        = {A Flexible Simulation Tool for Estimating Data Loss Risks in Storage Arrays},
  booktitle    = {29th IEEE Symposium on Massive Storage Systems and Technologies},
  month        = may,
  year         = {2013},
}