Data Access in Distributed Systems

• US 20100010999A1
• Filed: 07/10/2008
• Published: 01/14/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/10/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Juniper Networks Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Blackwave Inc. (Juniper Networks Incorporated)
• Inventors: Gerovac, Branko J., Carver, David C.
• Granted Patent: US 9,176,779 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: N/A
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5011 the resources being hardware resources other than CPUs, Servers and Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]

Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products for receiving a request for access to a first item of content stored on resources of a storage environment, the request for access being initiated by a first user, identifying an existing resource allocation arrangement associating elements of the first item of content with respective elements of the resources of the storage environment, performing an inquiry to determine whether an admission condition is satisfied, and upon satisfaction of the admission condition, generating a specification of an access operation, the access operation configured to enable a selected set of elements among the respective elements of the resources of the storage environment to be accessed.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving a request for access to a first item of content stored on resources of a storage environment, the request for access being initiated by a first user;

identifying an existing resource allocation arrangement associating elements of the first item of content with respective elements of the resources of the storage environment;

performing an inquiry to determine whether an admission condition is satisfied; and

upon satisfaction of the admission condition, generating a specification of an access operation, the access operation configured to enable a selected set of elements among the respective elements of the resources of the storage environment to be accessed.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein performing the inquiry comprises:

evaluating a workload condition of the resources of the storage components.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein performing the inquiry comprises:

evaluating a deviation in load across the respective elements of the resources of the storage environment associated with the first item of content.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein performing the inquiry comprise:

determining an availability of a capacity of a first storage component, the first storage component being an aggregation of some of the respective elements of the resources of the storage components associated with the first item of content.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein the capacity of a first storage component includes an access capacity characterized at least in part by a maximum data readout rate of the first storage component.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein the first storage component include one or multiple storage devices selected from at least one of the following types;

disk drives, solid-state memories, and non-volatile memories.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein a description of the existing resource allocation arrangement is maintained in a first database, the description including a representation of a plurality of mappings, each mapping being associated with each one of multiple instances of the first item of content stored on the resources of the storage environment.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein generating the specification of the access operation comprises:

evaluating a quality of each of the plurality of mappings associated with the first item of content;

based on a result of the evaluating the quality, selecting a preferred mapping among the plurality of mappings according to a preset criterion.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the preset criterion is associated with a degree of potential resource allocation conflict.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the access request includes an attribute characterizing the first item of content.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10, wherein the generating the specification of the access operation depends at least in part on the attribute characterizing the first item of content.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 10, wherein the attribute includes a set of attributes comprising one or more of the following:

file name, data length, data type, and a universal resource identifier (URI).

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a particular set of access request through a secured channel based on a verification of an identity of the first user.