Failure recovery algorithms for multimedia servers

  • Authors:

  • Prashant J. Shenoy;Harrick M. Vin

  • Affiliations:

  • Univ. of Texas at Austin, Austin;Univ. of Texas at Austin, Austin

  • Venue:
  • Multimedia Systems
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

In this paper, we present two novel disk failure recovery methods that utilize the inherent characteristicsof video streams for efficient recovery. Whereas the firstmethod exploits the inherent redundancy in video streams(rather than error-correcting codes) to approximately reconstruct data stored on failed disks, the second method exploitsthe sequentiality of video playback to reduce the overheadof online failure recovery in conventional RAID arrays. Forthe former approach, we present loss-resilient versions ofJPEG and MPEG compression algorithms. We present aninherently redundant array of disks (IRAD) architecture thatcombines these loss-resilient compression algorithms withtechniques for efficient placement of video streams on diskarrays to ensure that on-the-fly recovery does not imposeany additional load on the array. Together, they enhance thescalability of multimedia servers by (1) integrating the recovery process with the decompression of video streams,and thereby distributing the reconstruction process acrossthe clients; and (2) supporting graceful degradation in thequality of recovered images with increase in the number ofdisk failures. We present analytical and experimental resultsto show that both schemes significantly reduce the failurerecovery overhead in a multimedia server.