VIOLA - A Scalable and Fault - Tolerant Video - on - Demand System

In this paper, we present the architecture of a Video-on-Demand system called VIOLA. This system exhibits two distinctive features not found in other Video-on-Demand systems, namely scalability, and fault tolerance. System scalability is achieved through a novel Server Array architecture in which video data are distributed among an array of servers. This allows one to scale up the system capacity (like memory capacity, storage capacity, network bandwidth, and CPU processing power) simply by adding more servers and redistributing the video data among them. For fault tolerance, we further extend the server array architecture to a novel Redundant Array of Inexpensive Servers (RAIS) architecture where server failure can be sustained. The resultant VIOLA system can provide non-stop, continuous video services before, during, and after a server failure.