Architecture and performance analysis of a large-scale archival and retrieval system

Abstract

With the advances in imaging and storage technology, critical document handling and archiving applications have been migrating to digital technology, thereby reducing the cost and improving the quality and services. Documents are first sorted, scanned and compressed into digital images. Then state-of-the-art computer and networking technology is used to manage these images. In this paper we discuss the architecture and performance of a large, geographically distributed archival and retrieval system for image and document applications. The architecture of interest is a hierarchical one. We examine performance characteristics of the architecture and identify critical resources and parameters of system performance. Using decomposition and aggregation techniques, we model subsystems and study the end-to-end system performance. We show the performance/cost tradeoffs and various approaches to further optimize the system performance.