Box-to-box disk mirroring using Ethernet

Abstract

Failover between file server boxes requires data mirroring between them if they don't share access to the disk drives, which is typical for low-end and mid-range network attached storage servers. Most of designs for such data mirroring is done using existing network connections and on top of IP or TCP. The paper presents a design using an additional dedicated Ethernet interface and working directly on top of the data link layer. The proposed scheme will have the advantage of better performance including low overhead during normal operations and fast re-synchronization during recovery.