Reconfiguration of RAID-like Data Layouts in Distributed Storage Systems

Clustering of several storage servers is a common way to build fast and fault tolerant storage systems. One application can be found in the context of parallel programs that already run on clustered systems and need to write and read a huge amount of data from and to disks. Another application field are web and video streaming server that cause intense data transfer from and to disks. In this paper a distributed storage system is reviewed under the aspect of fault tolerance and reconfiguration of the data layout after faults. Data objects are stored in a data layout according to RAID level 3 among disk subsystems of different computers. Concurrent up- and down-streaming of data is provided by a technique that ensures data consistency. This consistency has been found to be beneficial for concurrent access and reconfiguration. Beyond, the system does not need a meta-data server, which often represents a bottleneck for distributed storage systems.