Reparo: A Fast RAID Recovery Scheme for Ultra-large SSDs

A recent ultra-large SSD (e.g., a 32-TB SSD) provides many benefits in building cost-efficient enterprise storage systems. Owing to its large capacity, however, when such SSDs fail in a RAID storage system, a long rebuild overhead is inevitable for RAID reconstruction that requires a huge amount of data copies among SSDs. Motivated by modern SSD failure characteristics, we propose a new recovery scheme, called reparo , for a RAID storage system with ultra-large SSDs. Unlike existing RAID recovery schemes, reparo repairs a failed SSD at the NAND die granularity without replacing it with a new SSD, thus avoiding most of the inter-SSD data copies during a RAID recovery step. When a NAND die of an SSD fails, reparo exploits a multi-core processor of the SSD controller in identifying failed LBAs from the failed NAND die and recovering data from the failed LBAs. Furthermore, reparo ensures no negative post-recovery impact on the performance and lifetime of the repaired SSD. Experimental results using 32-TB enterprise SSDs show that reparo can recover from a NAND die failure about 57 times faster than the existing rebuild method while little degradation on the SSD performance and lifetime is observed after recovery.

Comparative analysis of the exergy efficiency of methods for protecting gas exhaust ducts of boiler plants

This paper reports the results of studying the exergy effectiveness of thermal methods for anti-corrosion protection of the gas-draining tracts of boiler plants. These include the method of mixing heated air into flue gases, the method of passing part of the hot gases of the boiler through the bypass chimney, and a flue gas drying method. The research involved the devised comprehensive procedure based on an exergy approach. The dependences of exergy loss Elos and the heat- exergy criterion ε on the following parameters of thermal methods have been established: the amount of heated air N mixed into flue gases, the proportion of bypassed flue gases K, and the amount of dried flue gases R. A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of heat recovery systems when applying the methods considered has been performed. It has been established that for the method of mixing, Elos and ε at ambient temperature ten=10 °C demonstrate the lowest values, that is, the efficiency of the system, in this case, is the highest. The most effective, when implementing the bypass method, is the heat recovery system at ten=10 °C. Under the method of drying, at all values of the amount of dried flue gases, the loss of exergy is the lowest at ten=0 °C. As regards the heat- exergy criterion, at values R≤20 %, the lowest values of ε are observed at ten=10 °C. At R>20 %, the lowest values of ε are at ten=0 °C. Thus, the efficiency of the system when implementing the method of drying is the highest at ten=0 °C and at the amount of dried air of R>20 %. The study reported here would provide the necessary information for designing optimal heat recovery schemes. The development of this study is to establish the relationship between the exergy and environmental efficiency of thermal protection methods in order to further reduce toxic emissions.

Energy-Efficient and Reliable Face-Routing Scheme in Wireless Networks

Face-routing is one of the reliable recovery schemes when geographic routing fails to transmit data packets. Although studies on face-routing can overcome the failure of the data transmission, they lead to much energy consumption due to frequent data transmissions between adjacent nodes for carrying out the rule of face-routing. To avoid the frequent data transmissions, several face-routing schemes have been recently proposed to transmit data packets to the farthest-neighbor node. However, they happen with many data retransmissions because the farthest-neighbor node has a relatively low transmission success ratio. To solve this problem, we propose a new face-routing scheme that determines the most appropriate neighbor node to balance the trade-off between energy efficiency and transmission reliability with two viewpoints. The first viewpoint focuses on how to increase the distance progress of the data delivery in one-hop range to enhance energy efficiency. After that, the second viewpoint focuses on how to increase the success ratio of the data delivery to enhance the transmission reliability. As a result of the simulation, it was confirmed that the proposed method achieves better performance in terms of energy efficiency than existing face-routing research, and it is better than recent face-routing research in terms of reliability and retransmission.

Fmdtools

Incorporating resilience in design is important for the long-term viability of complex engineered systems. Complex aerospace systems, for example, must ensure safety in the event of hazards resulting from part failures and external circumstances while maintaining efficient operations. Traditionally, mitigating hazards in early design has involved experts manually creating hazard analyses in a time-consuming process that hinders one’s ability to compare designs. Furthermore, as opposed to reliability-based design, resilience-based design requires using models to determine the dynamic effects of faults to compare recovery schemes. Models also provide design opportunities, since models can be parameterized and optimized and because the resulting hazard analyses can be updated iteratively. While many theoretical frameworks have been presented for early hazard assessment, most currently-available modelling tools are meant for the later stages of design. Given the wide adoption of Python in the broader research community, there is an opportunity to create an environment for researchers to study the resilience of different PHM technologies in the early phases of design. This paper describes fmdtools, an attempt to realize this opportunity with a set of modules which may be used to construct different design models, simulate system behaviors over a set of fault scenarios and analyze the resilience of the resulting simulation results. This approach is demonstrated in the hazard analysis and architecture design of a multi-rotor drone, showing how the toolkit enables a large number of analyses to be performed on a relatively simple model as it progresses through the early design process.

The temperature of Britain's coalfields

Low-temperature heat recovery, cooling and storage schemes, using abandoned flooded mine workings, are a viable option for low-carbon heating solutions within many abandoned British coalfields. The temperature of mine water is a useful parameter, coupled with depth to water, sustainable yield and recharge potential, to identify suitable locations and calculate the likely performance of heat recovery schemes. This paper aims to provide the first mapping and synthesis of the temperature of Britain's coalfields to support this emerging technology. Using the best available evidence, a median geothermal gradient of 24.1°C km−1 was calculated for the British coalfields. However, geothermal gradients between separate coalfields can vary from 17.3 to 34.3°C km−1. The North East, Cumbria and Yorkshire coalfields all have mean geothermal gradients generally >30°C km−1, whereas geothermal gradients of generally <23°C km−1 are measured in the Warwickshire, South Wales, Staffordshire, Douglas and Fife coalfields. Active dewatering schemes are shown to locally increase the apparent measured geothermal gradient by ingress and mixing of deeper water into the pumping shafts. This baseline spatial mapping and synthesis of coalfield temperatures offers significant benefit to those planning, designing and regulating heat recovery and storage in Britain's abandoned coalfields.

fmdtools: A Fault Propagation Toolkit for Resilience Assessment in Early Design

Incorporating resilience in design is important for the long-term viability of complex engineered systems. Complex aerospace systems, for example, must ensure safety in the event of hazards resulting from part failures and external circumstances while maintaining efficient operations. Traditionally, mitigating hazards in early design has involved experts manually creating hazard analyses in a time-consuming process that hinders one's ability to compare designs. Furthermore, as opposed to reliability-based design, resilience-based design requires using models to determine the dynamic effects of faults to compare recovery schemes. Models also provide design opportunities, since models can be parameterized and optimized and because the resulting hazard analyses can be updated iteratively. While many analysis frameworks have been presented for early hazard assessment, these frameworks are difficult to apply without reference implementations, and most currently-available fault modelling tools are meant for the later stages of design. This paper describes fmdtools, a Python-based resilience-based design and analysis environment that solves these problems by enabling the designer to represent the system in the early design process, simulate the effects of faults, and quantify corresponding resilience metrics. This toolkit is then demonstrated in the hazard analysis and architecture design of a multi-rotor drone.