MULTIMEDIA RESOURCE-MANAGEMENT IN OS 390 LAN SERVER/

In a multimedia server, resource reservation is critical for guarantee ing jitter-free delivery of video. In this paper, we describe the reso urce manager component of the OS/390(TM) LAN Server (video server) tha t implements resource reservation. The resource manager functions can be divided into three categories: (1) the system management functions that allow arbitrary multimedia resources to be dynamically defined, u ndefined and calibrated, and their capacities monitored remotely via t he Simple Network Management Protocol, (2) the operational functions t hat allow video streams to reserve and release resources for supportin g playback without explicit specification of the needed resources, and (3) the real-time data import function that places videos on the stor age devices so as to balance the load among the devices after making t he necessary space and bandwidth reservations. We finally discuss rese arch issues to exploit economies of scale.