Technology trends and disk array performance

The original design of disk arrays was motivated primarily hg the desire for greater fault tolerance and higher data transfer rates than those achievable with a single disk. However, disk technology has continued to evolve, driven largely by the needs of the commodity personal computer market, rather than those of the "niche markets" of parallel and fault-tolerant computing, Using a combination of analytic modeling and simulation, we consider four disk array designs and extrapolate the behavior of these designs as a function of predicted changes in disk technology, The results of this analysis suggest that changes in disk technology may lessen, though not eliminate, the current performance advantages of disk arrays and may shift current design points. (C) 1997 Academic Press.