Data Storage in Distributed Systems

• US 20100011364A1
• 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.
• Inventors: Gerovac, Branko J., Carver, David C.
• Granted Patent: US 8,954,976 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5011 the resources being hardware resources other than CPUs, Servers and Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5016 the resource being the memory
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]

Abstract

Systems, methods, and apparatus, including computer program products for receiving a content transfer request that includes a first set of provisioning attributes that characterizes one or more operational objectives of a first item of content; and processing the content transfer request to allocate resources of a storage environment to store the first item of content.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving a content transfer request that includes a first set of provisioning attributes that characterizes one or more operational objectives of a first item of content; and

processing the content transfer request to allocate resources of a storage environment to store the first item of content.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein processing the content transfer request includes:

comparing the first set of provisioning attributes against sets of schema attributes to identify a set of schema attributes that satisfies the one or more operational objectives of the first item of content;

allocating resources of the storage environment to the first item of content to commit a complete resource allocation arrangement determined based on a partial resource allocation arrangement associated with the identified set of schema attributes; and

taking an action to cause the first item of content to be stored in the allocated resources of the storage environment.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the complete resource allocation arrangement includes a description of a destination on the resources of the storage environment associated with each one of multiple elements of the first item of content.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising:

prior to receiving the content transfer request, configuring the sets of schema attributes and the partial resource allocation arrangements associated with the respective sets of schema attributes using domain-specific knowledge.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, further comprising:

storing the sets of schema attributes and the associated partial resource allocation arrangements in a first database.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more operational objectives of the first item of content comprise one or more of the following:

popularity, integrity, resilience, accessibility, power consumption, geographical affinity and exclusion, and topological affinity and exclusion.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein each of the sets of schema attributes has a corresponding partial resource allocation arrangement.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein each of the sets of schema attributes represents a storage schema that specifies a partial resource allocation arrangement for a particular attribute-based category of content items.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the content transfer request further includes the first item of content, and wherein the method of taking the action to cause the first item of content to be stored in the allocated resources of the storage environment comprises:

storing elements of the first item of content in respective elements of the allocated resources of the storage environment.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising:

determining the complete resource allocation arrangement based on the partial resource allocation arrangement associated with the identified set of schema attributes.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10, wherein determining the complete resource allocation arrangement comprises:

iteratively generating a candidate of the complete allocation arrangement based on the partial resource allocation arrangement;

evaluating a quality of the candidate according to a resource allocation criterion; and

selecting the complete resource allocation arrangement based on a result of the evaluating of the quality of the candidate.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein the resource allocation criterion is associated with a distribution of workload among resources of the storage environment.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein the resource allocation criterion is associated with a degree of potential resource allocation conflict.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein the resource allocation criterion is associated with an assessment of a hierarchical relevance of each one of a set of operational objectives characterizing a plurality of items of the content.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 14, wherein the assessment of the hierarchical relevance of each of the one or more operational objectives is specific to each of at least some of the plurality of items of the content.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein selecting the complete resource allocation arrangement comprises:

defining an objective function according to the resource allocation criterion,

wherein the selected complete resource allocation arrangement optimizes the objective function.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein allocating the resources of the storage environment comprises:

mapping elements of the first item of content to respective allocated resources of the storage environment.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, further comprising:

documenting a result of mapping the elements of the first item of content to respective allocated resources of the storage environment in a second database.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 18, wherein the documenting the result of mapping in the second database enables locating the first item of content in the allocated resources of the storage environment with specificity for further access operations.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein resources of the storage environment include one or multiple storage devices selected from at least one of the following types:

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

21. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the content transfer request further includes a second set of provisioning attributes comprising one or more of the following:

name, data length and data type.