Disk Striping (VMS and Unix)

[charisse at convexs.UUCP]

Striping refers to the capability of spreading a file system 
across multiple disks.  It allows you to take advantage of 
parallel I/O operations at the hardware level and can increase I/O 
throughput.

For example if you have 4 disks you can intiate  4 reads at 
once. Thus increasing throughput by approximately 4X. Of course
you still have to pay the piper.  Your I/O subsystem has to have
knowledge of the disk layout in order to optimally spread
your file across multiple disks. And what do you do if you
are striping together disks with partitions of unequal size?

Both the Cray and the C1 provide a disk striping capability.
It seems to be a win for large machines.

charisse
ihnp4!convex!charisse
convex!charisse at rice.arpa