@Article{lee:file-assignment,
  author = {Lin-Wen Lee and Peter Scheuermann and Radek Vingralek},
  title = {File Assignment in Parallel {I/O} Systems with Minimal Variance of
  Service Time},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Computers},
  year = {2000},
  month = {February},
  volume = {49},
  number = {2},
  pages = {127--140},
  URL = {http://www.computer.org/tc/tc2000/t0127abs.htm},
  keywords = {parallel I/O, parallel file system, pario-bib},
  abstract = {We address the problem of assigning nonpartitioned files in a
  parallel I/O system where the file accesses exhibit Poisson arrival rates and
  fixed service times. We present two new file assignment algorithms based on
  open queuing networks which aim at minimizing simultaneously the load balance
  across all disks, as well as the variance of the service time at each disk.
  We first present an off-line algorithm, Sort Partition, which assigns to each
  disk files with similar access time. Next, we show that, assuming that a
  perfectly balanced file assignment can be found for a given set of files,
  Sort Partition will find the one with minimal mean response time. We then
  present an on-line algorithm, Hybrid Partition, that assigns groups of files
  with similar service times in successive intervals while guaranteeing that
  the load imbalance at any point does not exceed a certain threshold. We
  report on synthetic experiments which exhibit skew in file accesses and sizes
  and we compare the performance of our new algorithms with the vanilla greedy
  file allocation algorithm.}
}