BATON PASSING OPTIMIZATION SCHEME FOR LOAD BALANCING/CONFIGURATION PLANNING IN A VIDEO-ON-DEMAND COMPUTER SYSTEM

摘要

A video on demand computer system includes a plurality of storage media each storinga plurality of videos. The storage media are disks attached to a computer system. The computersystem plays the videos on demand by reading out the videos from the disks as data steams toplay selected ones of the videos for users responsive to received user performance requests. Thecomputer system is programmed to monitor the numbers of videos being performed for each ofthe disks. Based on the monitoring function performed by the computer system, the computersystem performs a load balancing function by transferring the performance of a video in progressfrom one of the disks to another disk having a copy of the video in progress. The computersystem periodically performs a reassignment function to transfer videos between the disks tooptimize load balancing based on the user performance requests for each of the videos. Thereare two phases to the load balancing performed by the computer system; a static phase and adynamic phase. In the static phase, videos are assigned to memory and disks, and in the dynamicphase there is provided a scheme for playing videos with minimal and balanced loads on thedisks. The static phase supports the dynamic phase which insures optimal real-time operationof the system. Dynamic phase load balancing is accomplished by a process of baton passing.