An ant inspired technique for storage area network design

Abstract

Designing storage area networks is an NP-hard problem. Previous work has focused on traditional algorithmic techniques to automatically determine fabric requirements, network topology, and flow routes. This paper looks at the ability of an ant colony optimisation algorithm to evolve new architectures. For some small networks (10 hosts, 10 devices, and single-layered) we find that we can create networks which result in savings of several thousand dollars over previously established methods. This paper is the first publication, to our knowledge, to describe the successful application of this technique to storage area network design. © Springer-Verlag 2004.