PDL Abstract

RAIDframe: Rapid Prototyping for Disk Arrays

Carnegie Mellon University Technical Report CMU-CS-95-200, October 1995. Superceded by Proc. of the 1996 Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems (SIGMETRICS)., May 1996, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp.
268-269.

Garth A. Gibson, William V. Courtright II, Mark Holland, Jim Zelenka

School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/

The complexity of advanced disk array architectures makes accurate representation necessary, arduous, and error-prone. In this paper, we present RAIDframe, an array framework that separates architectural policy from execution mechanism. RAIDframe facilitations rapid prototyping of new RAID architectures by localizing modifications and providing libraries of existing architectures to extend. In addition, RAIDframe implemented architectures run the same code as a synthetic and trace-driven simulator, as a user-level application managing raw disks, and as a Digital Unix device-driver capable of mounting a filesystem. Evaluation shows that RAIDframe performance is equivalent to less complex array implementations and thance is equivalent to less complex array implementations and that case studies of RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, and parity declustering achieve expected performance.

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