IntelliJuke: a caching jukebox-based storage server
Yitzhak Birk, Uri Kareev, Mark Mokryn · USENIX Windows NT Workshop · 1997
The cost-effectiveness of CDs applies only to the storage medium itself; once a drive is included, CD-ROM often becomes inferior to magnetic hard drives. Moreover, a CD is often far from full, thus further reducing its cost-effectiveness. (For this reason, DVD will not help in many cases.) Jukeboxes (AKA changers) feature high volumetric storage density with moderate communication bandwidth and multi-second access times. Jukebox manufacturers have focused on building very robust systems with high-performance robotics in order to mitigate the intrinsic performance shortcomings, resulting in a price-per-slot of $30-$120 in late 1996! We believe that jukeboxes should provide access to a very large number of CDs at minimal cost, and that caching on magnetic disk drives should provide the performance. A byproduct of caching is reduced jukebox activity, so the jukebox's robustness may be reduced without increasing the mean time between failures. Our focus is on efficient caching.