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A Highly Accurate Method for Assessing Reliability of Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
March 2009 (vol. 58 no. 3)
pp. 289-299
ASCII Text
x 
 
Jon Elerath, Michael Pecht, "A Highly Accurate Method for Assessing Reliability of Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)," IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 289-299, March, 2009.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/TC.2008.163,
author = {Jon Elerath and Michael Pecht},
title = {A Highly Accurate Method for Assessing Reliability of Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)},
journal ={IEEE Transactions on Computers},
volume = {58},
number = {3},
issn = {0018-9340},
year = {2009},
pages = {289-299},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TC.2008.163},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - JOUR
JO - IEEE Transactions on Computers
TI - A Highly Accurate Method for Assessing Reliability of Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
IS - 3
SN - 0018-9340
SP289
EP299
EPD - 289-299
A1 - Jon Elerath,
A1 - Michael Pecht,
PY - 2009
KW - Hardware reliability
KW - Redundant design
KW - Reliability
KW - Testing
KW - and Fault-Tolerance
VL - 58
JA - IEEE Transactions on Computers
ER -
 
Jon Elerath, Network Appliance, Sunnyvale
Michael Pecht, University of Maryland, College Park
Abstract - The statistical bases for current models of RAID reliability are reviewed and a highly accurate alternative is provided and justified. This new model corrects statistical errors associated with the pervasive assumption that system (RAID group) times to failure follow a homogeneous Poisson process, and corrects errors associated with assuming the time-to-failure and time-to-restore distributions are exponentially distributed. Statistical justification for the new model uses theory for reliability of repairable systems. Four critical component distributions are developed from field data. These distributions are for times to catastrophic failure, reconstruction and restoration, read errors, and disk data scrubs. Model results have been verified and predict between 2 to 1,500 times as many double disk failures as estimates made using the mean time to data loss method. Model results are compared to system level field data for RAID group of 14 drives and show excellent correlation and greater accuracy than either MTTDL.

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Index Terms:
Hardware reliability, Redundant design, Reliability, Testing, and Fault-Tolerance
Citation:
Jon Elerath, Michael Pecht, "A Highly Accurate Method for Assessing Reliability of Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)," IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 289-299, March 2009, doi:10.1109/TC.2008.163
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