Resource management issues of a video server

A video-on-demand system in a distributed environment relies on a video server that simultaneously provides video services to multiple clients and guarantees the quality of service (QoS) for each client. Because video data is categorized as continuous media, which has an implied dynamic temporal dimension, resource management of a video server has to be specially designed to meet new requirements. In this paper we develop the policy and the mechanism of resource management for implementing an MPEG- based video server that supports common VCR functionality. Our goal is to maximize the number of video streams to clients, while maintaining the quality of service of each video stream, under the limitation of system resources available on a workstation. We first define the policy and the QoS parameters for different video services. Then, we describe the mechanisms of admission control and resource control to efficiently implement the policy and guarantee the QoS for video services. A dynamic approach of resource reservation dealing with state change is also presented. The major contribution of this paper is to present a framework that integrates CPU/disk/network scheduling and memory management for video services. Under such a framework, we can manage system resources and optimize individual resources systematically.