DISK LOAD BALANCING FOR VIDEO-ON-DEMAND SYSTEMS

For a video-on-demand computer system, we propose a scheme which balan ces the load on the disks, thereby helping to solve a performance prob lem crucial to achieving maximal video throughput. Our load-balancing scheme consists of two components. The static component determines goo d assignments of videos to groups of striped disks. The dynamic compon ent uses these assignments, and features a ''DASD dancing'' algorithm which performs real-time disk scheduling in an effective manner. Our s cheme works synergistically with disk striping. We examine the perform ance of the proposed algorithm via simulation experiments.