Speaker
D. Sanders
(UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI)
Description
High-energy physics experiments are currently recording large amounts of data and in a few years will be
recording prodigious quantities of data. New methods must be developed to handle this data and make
analysis at universities possible. Grid Computing is one method; however, the data must be cached at the
various Grid nodes. We examine some storage techniques that exploit recent developments in commodity
hardware. Disk arrays using RAID level 5 (RAID5) include both parity and striping. The striping improves
access speed. The parity protects data in the event of a single disk failure, but not in the case of multiple disk
failures.
We report on tests of dual-processor Linux Software RAID5 arrays and Hardware RAID5 arrays using the 12-
disk 3ware controller, in conjunction with 300 GB disks, for use in offline high-energy physics data analysis.
The price of IDE disks is now less than $1/GB. These RAID5 disk arrays can be scaled to sizes affordable to
small institutions and used when fast random access at low cost is important.
Primary authors
D. Petravick
(Fermilab)
D. Sanders
(UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI)
D. Summers
(UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI)
L. Cremaldi
(UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI)
M.D. Joy
(UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI)
R. Godang
(UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI)
V. Eschenburg
(UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI)
