Parallel file systems achieve a high I/O throughput by dividing a file into multiple blocks and storing them on multiple I/O nodes. However, the reliability and availability of the parallel file systems are sacrificed for the stripping of file data over multi I/O nodes. A new mechanism named Logic Mirror Ring (LMR), has been developed to improve the reliability and availability of the parallel file systems in this study. A logic mirror ring is built over all I/O nodes to indicate the mirror relationship among the nodes, i.e., each node maintains not only its own data but also the mirror data of other nodes. The fault tolerant capability of the system is improved because the node maintaining the mirror data of the failed node will take over the requests to the failed node. The mirror depth can be adjusted to different levels based on the requirements of the reliability and availability. A model is developed to evaluate the reliability and availability of the parallel file systems. The effects of LMR on the reliability and availability of the parallel file system is studied. The results show that LMR can be used to improve the reliability and availability of the parallel file systems effectively.
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