Allocation of copies of s distinct files in an information network

摘要

The problem of deciding on the optimal allocation of copies of a file in a computer network has been solved under various sets of assumptions. This study considers s distinct files (which may well be s physical partitions of a database) and assumes that the selected allocation must not violate any disk space constraints and must not result in overloaded and/or underloaded nodes in the network. The problem solved asks therefore for the optimal allocation of the files by prohibiting the allocation of more than k files (k ≤ s) in a node. Two models are developed which solve the problem for the cases where 1.(a) a single copy, and2.(b) multiple copies of each file may appear in the optimal allocation.