CSLE: A Cost-sensitive Learning Engine for Disk Failure Prediction in Large Data Centers

As the principal failure in data centers, disk failure may pose the risk of data loss, increase the maintenance cost, and affect system availability. As a proactive fault tolerance technology, disk failure prediction can minimize the loss before a failure occurs. Whereas, a weak prediction model with a low Failure Detection Rate (FDR) and high False Alarm Rate (FAR) may substantially increase the system cost due to inadequate consideration or misperception of the misclassification cost. To address these challenges, we propose a cost-sensitive learning engine CSLE for disk failure prediction, which combines a two-phase feature selection based on Cohen's D and Genetic Algorithm, a meta-algorithm based on cost-sensitive learning, and an adaptive optimal classifier for heterogeneous and homogeneous disk series. Experimental results on real datasets show that the AUC of CSLE is increased by 2%-42% compared with the commonly used rank-sum test. CSLE can reduce the misclassification cost by 52 %-96 % compared with the rank model. Besides, CSLE has a better pervasiveness than the traditional prediction model, it can reduce both the misclassification cost and the FAR by 16%-70% for heterogeneous disk series, and increase the FDR by 3%-29% for homogeneous disk series.