Queueing Analysis of the IBM 2314 Disk Storage Facility

Abstract

In this paper the use of the techniques of queueing theory in analyzing the performance of a mass storage device in a real-time environment is demonstrated; concern is with the tradeoff experienced in practice between throughput of a stochastic service device and the response time for each service request. For concreteness, the analysis is applied to the IBM 2314 disk storage facility. The results are presented in a series of graphs showing the file system response time versus the throughput for several distributions of record length and arm movement. The queueing model and the theoretical tools used are described in sufficient detail to permit the reader to apply the techniques to other systems. In particular, any disk whose seek time characteristic can be approximated by a piecewise linear continuous function may be analyzed by the methods presented.