A new distributed storage scheme for cluster video server

For cluster video servers, it is very important to design a good distributed storage system with high performance. One of the important issues in designing a good distributed storage system is how to store multimedia data on many storage nodes. This issue includes two topics: the scheme of splitting an entire file into many clips, and the storage of these clips on many nodes. We have designed a new multimedia data storage scheme for cluster video server. In the new system, a novel multimedia file splitting scheme, named Owl, and a clips striping scheme have been proposed. In contrast with traditional media data splitting schemes based on fixed space length and constant time length, Owl is addressed with the consideration of spatial and temporal information. This scheme Owl has universality for every media format encoded based on time andmakes cluster video servers work efficiently. Besides, the scheme Owl is feasible and easy to implement. With the data splitting scheme and the clips striping scheme, cluster video servers have good performance. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.