Simulating raid storage systems for performance analysis

Abstract

Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) provides an inexpensive, fault-tolerant storage solution using commodity hard-drives. RAID storage systems have recently surged in popularity amongst enterprise clients, as they provide economical, scalable, high-performance solutions for their storage requirements. The performance of RAID systems is negatively affected by the overhead required to manage and access multiple drives, and multiple disk failures can result in data loss. As RAID has developed, various improvements have been devised by both academia and business to address these shortcomings. These improvements have suggested improved architectures to increase performance and new coding techniques to protect against data loss in the case of drive failure. Evaluating the effect on performance of these improvements is greatly simplified by the use of discrete-event, software simulations. The RAID Operations Simulator for Testing Implementations (RÖSTI) was developed to support such simulation experiments.