Patent ID: 7505886

Claim:
A method of determining sought parameter values for a model of a data storage system comprising: performing an initial set of runs of each of a plurality of experiments on the data storage system to obtain an initial set of measurements of system behavior characteristics; computing a first value for each sought parameter from the initial set of measurements of system behavior characteristics; determining a number of additional runs of each of the plurality of experiments needed to meet a desired error tolerance constraint for each sought parameter, wherein the number of additional runs is computed from n=[t 2 *s 2 /δ 2 ] and t is a value for the two-sided Student's t statistic with (n−1) degrees of freedom at a desired confidence level, and ( x ±δ) defines a desired confidence interval; performing the number of additional runs of each of the plurality of experiments, to obtain additional measurements of system behavior characteristics; computing a second value for each sought parameter using the initial measurements of system behavior characteristics combined with the additional measurements of system behavior characteristics; and determining whether the desired error tolerance constraints are met for each sought parameter based on the second computed value for each sought parameter; wherein, if the desired error tolerance constraints are not met, repeatedly performing the steps of determining a number of additional runs, performing the number of additional runs, computing a subsequent value for each sought parameter, and determining whether the desired error tolerance constraints are met, until the desired error tolerance constraints are met.