An efficient retrieval selection algorithm for video servers with random duplicated assignment storage technique

Random Duplicated Assignment (RDA) is an approach in which video data is stored by assigning a number of copies of each data block to different, randomly chosen disks. It has been shown that this approach results in smaller response times and lower disk and RAM costs compared to the well-known disk stripping techniques. Based on this storage approach, one has to determine, for each given batch of data blocks, from which disk each of the data blocks is to be retrieved. This is to be done in such a way that the maximum load of the disks is minimized. The problem is called the Retrieval Selection Problem (RSP). In this paper, we propose a new efficient algorithm for RSP. This algorithm is based on the breadth-first search approach and is able to guarantee optimal solutions for RSP in O(n²+mn), where m and n correspond to the number of data blocks and the number of disks, respectively. We will show that our proposed algorithm has a lower time complexity than an existing algorithm, called the MFS algorithm.