Zoned-RAID

Abstract

The RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) system has been widely used in practical storage applications for better performance, cost effectiveness, and reliability. This study proposes a novel variant of RAID named Zoned-RAID (Z-RAID). Z-RAID improves the performance of traditional RAID by utilizing the zoning property of modern disks which provides multiple zones with different data transfer rates within a disk. Z-RAID levels 1, 5, and 6 are introduced to enhance the effective data transfer rate of RAID levels 1, 5, and 6, respectively, by constraining the placement of data blocks in multizone disks. We apply the Z-RAID to a practical and popular application, streaming media server, that requires a high-data transfer rate as well as a high reliability. The analytical and experimental results demonstrate the superiority of Z-RAID to conventional RAID. Z-RAID provides a higher effective data transfer rate in normal mode with no disadvantage. In the presence of a disk failure, Z-RAID still performs as well as RAID. © 2007 ACM.