A New Approach to the Design of High Performance Multiple Disk Subsystems: Dynamic Load Balancing Schemes

The performance of storage subsystems has not followed the rapid improvements in processors technology, despite the increased capacity and density in storage medium. Here, we introduce a new model based on the idea of enhancing the I/O subsystem controller capabilities by dynamic load balancing on a storage subsystem of multiple disk drives. The request servicing is modified such that each request is directed to the most appropriate disk drive towards servicing performance improvement. The redirection is performed by a proposed algorithm which considers the disk drive queues and the disk drives “popularity”. The proposed request servicing has been simulated and the load balancing approach has been shown quite effective as compared to conventional request servicing.