Redundant arrays of independent libraries (RAIL): a tertiary storage system

Abstract

Increased computer networking has sparked a resurgence of the 'on-line' revolution of the 1970's, making ever larger amounts of data available on a world wide basis and placing greater demands on the performance and availability of tertiary storage systems. In this paper, we argue for a new approach to tertiary storage system architecture that is obtained by coupling multiple small and inexpensive 'building block' libraries (or jukeboxes) together to create larger tertiary storage systems. We call the resulting system a RAIL (Redundant Arrays of Independent Libraries) and show that it has performance and availability characteristics superior to conventional tertiary storage systems, for almost the same dollar/megabyte cost.