Minimal cost replicated file system with an availability constraint

In a replicated file system, copies of the same file are kept in different servers sb that failures of some servers can be tolerant. The goal of a rep licated file system is to increase the probability that an operation tread or write) can be performed, i.e., to increase the availability of the file. Giving a minimal acceptable availability of a file, the objective is to mi nimize the total cost required to build a replicated file system that satis fies the availability constraint. In this paper, an efficient algorithm is proposed to find the minimal cost replicated file system. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.