Performance analysis of hybrid disk array architectures to meet I/O requirements

Abstract

Disk array is an I/O subsystem incorporating multiple disks to improve the I/O performance. This paper considers general architectural models of hybrid disk array systems which integrate asynchronous and synchronous architectures together. An I/O workload is generally characterized by average request size, average request rate, and mean response time requirement. In this paper, we propose an analytic performance model of hybrid disk array systems for a given I/O workload. With the help of the analytic model, we can determine the three important design parameters of a hybrid disk array system in order to meet the mean I/O response time requirement. These parameters include the minimum number of required disks, the degree of declustering, and the degree of synchronization. Our analytic model is verified by the simulation.