Simulator for determining data loss in a fault tolerant system

A method of simulating a storage system to determine occurrence of a data loss in the fault tolerant system, comprising:

• providing a list of minimal erasures corresponding to an erasure code having a plurality of symbols implemented across a plurality of storage devices in a storage system;
• providing failure models corresponding to the storage devices;
• creating a bookkeeping minimal erasures list (MEL) based on the list of minimal erasures, the bookkeeping MEL comprising a plurality of entries corresponding to the minimal erasures;
• simulating a plurality of device events based on the failure models that result in a risk of data loss;
• updating the bookkeeping MEL based on the simulated device events;
• and
• determining occurrence of a data loss from the storage system based on the updated bookkeeping MEL.

An article comprising a computer-accessible storage medium containing instructions that when executed by a processor-based system cause the processor-based system to:

• generate a list of minimal erasures corresponding to an erasure code having a plurality of symbols;
• simulate device events in a storage system comprising a plurality of storage devices, wherein the plurality of symbols is implemented across the storage devices;
• track a number of symbols lost as a result of the device events;
• update the list of minimal erasures when the number of lost symbols reaches or exceeds a predefined threshold;
• and
• determine occurrence of a data loss from the storage system based on the updated list.

A method of simulating a fault tolerant system to determine occurrence of a data loss, comprising:

• providing a list of erasure patterns corresponding to an erasure code implemented across a plurality of devices in a fault tolerant system;
• providing failure models corresponding to the devices in the fault tolerant system;
• simulating device events based on the failure models;
• updating the list of erasure patterns when a number of device events resulting in a risk of data loss reaches or exceeds a Hamming distance of the erasure code;
• and
• determining occurrence of a data loss in the fault tolerant system based on the updated list of erasure patterns.

A method of simulating a fault tolerant system to determine occurrence of a data loss, comprising:

• providing a list of minimal erasure patterns corresponding to an erasure code implemented across a plurality of devices in a fault tolerant system;
• simulating a device event in the fault tolerant system;
• updating the list of minimal erasure patterns based on the device event;
• and
• determining occurrence of a data loss in the fault tolerant system based on the updated list of minimal erasure patterns.