CEA: A Cyclic Expansion Algorithm for data migration in parallel video servers

Parallel video servers can achieve highly storage-saving and granularly load-balancing, but they suffer from a system expansion problem. As the number of users continuously increases, the system inevitably needs to expand the number of video servers. However, the expansion of a parallel video server system is not as simple as that of a replicated video server system. Hence, this work develops an efficient expansion algorithm, called the Cyclic Expansion Algorithm (CEA), for parallel video servers. The proposed CEA algorithm has several good features. First, the data layout of each video content exhibits periodicity. Consequently, the meta-data size of each video and the complexity of the CEA algorithm are reduced. Second, the number of required data movements during a system expansion is optimized. Third, the total number of required XOR recomputations for updating parity blocks during an expansion is also minimized. Additionally, the new CEA can be applied to a variety of distributed storage systems, such as the cloud-based storage systems using striping and parity check techniques. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.