Optimal space allocation on disk storage devices

Abstract

When the amount of space required for file storage exceeds the amount which can be kept online, decisions must be made as to which files are to be permanently resident and which mountable. These decisions will affect the number of mount requests issued to the operators. This is often a bottleneck in a computing facility, and reducing the number of mounts thus decreases turnaround time. An optimization model for the assignment of files to disk packs, and packs to either resident or nonresident status is presented. Heuristics are suggested for those cases in which it is Inefficient to compute the actual optimum.

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