HP Labs Technical Reports

Zone-Bit-Recording-Enhanced Video Data Layout Strategies

Chen, Shenze; Thapar, Manu

HPL-95-124

Keyword(s):

Abstract: Rapid progress in high speed networking and mass storage technologies has made it possible to provide video-on-demand (VOD) services, that deliver movies to viewers' homes on request. In this paper, we study video data layout issues in the video server design. Specifically, we present a family of novel video data layout strategies, called Zone-Bit-Recording-Enhanced (ZBRE) layout schemes, which take into account the multiple-zone-recording feature of modern disk drives. The ZBRE layout schemes can be applied to either individual disks or disk arrays, such as RAID 3. Simulation results show that, by carefully laying out popular movies in the outer zones and aggregating "hot" movies together, disk performance can be improved significantly, with an up to 23% higher throughput than by randomly laying out data on disks. More importantly, these performance benefits are obtained without incurring any extra hardware cost.

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