The PI proposes to validate and evaluate a new technology for mirroring data from a primary storage to mirror storage across a LAN/WAN network for the purpose of data protection. The idea of the new technology is to mirror only the parity resulting from a write operation instead of the data itself. By leveraging the parity computation that exists in RAID storage systems, we mirror only the new parity to the remote site whenever a disk write operation is performed.
Intellectual Merit
Mirroring-only-parity (MOP) results in substantial data reduction making it possible to do real-time data mirroring over limited bandwidth network without negatively impacting application performance. Data can be computed back using the received parity and previously existing data at mirror storage. The new method trades off inexpensive and fast computations outside of the critical data path for high cost and slow communication. Preliminary analyses show that an order of magnitude data reduction is possible without noticeable overheads that are generally required by existing technologies such as compression algorithms and TCP/IP optimizations.
Broader Impact
The impact of the proposed research is expected to be dramatic and broad. Industries such as financial, health care, information technology, manufacturing, governmental, research/education all rely on digital data that needs to be protected from any unexpected disasters.If validated, our new technology makes it possible for any organization to inexpensively deploy remote data mirroring in real time, which has not been possible because of the prohibitively high cost and intolerable delays of traditional technologies. The proposed research will have educational impact because the proposed experimental activities will be mainly carried out by graduate and undergraduate students.
