READING A FILE FROM A CLOUD STORAGE SOLUTION

• US 20110276622A1
• Filed: 05/06/2010
• Published: 11/10/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 05/06/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Go Daddy Operating Company LLC (GoDaddy, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Go Daddy Group Incorporated (GoDaddy, Inc.)
• Inventors: Krouse, Brian, Strange, Brent, Knapp, Adam, Nilsen, Eric, Miller, Joseph
• Granted Patent: US 8,260,913 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services

Abstract

Systems and methods of the present invention provide for a user requesting a file or a plurality of file chunks stored in a file storage system, and a customized metadata stored in data storage. One or more tracker servers may determine file locations in the file system, and the location of the customized metadata in the data storage. These locations may be returned to an application, possibly an API, which may determine one or more URLs for the file locations and perform an HTTP request to read the file or file chunks from the locations or URLs in the file system. The file or file chunks, along with the customized metadata, may then be returned and displayed to the user that requested them.

Claims

1. A method, comprising the steps of:

a) receiving from a user, via a user interface on a client and an application on one or more servers hosted in a data center, a request for a file or a plurality of file chunks stored within a file storage system and a request for a customized metadata about the file stored in a data storage, the client, the one or more servers, the file storage system and the data storage communicatively coupled to a network;

b) determining, by one or more tracker servers communicatively coupled to the network, one or more file locations within the file storage system for the file or the plurality of file chunks, the one or more file locations stored in the data storage;

c) locating, by the application and based on the one or more file locations received by the one or more tracker servers for the file or the plurality of file chunks, one or more Uniform Resource Locators within the file storage system for the file or the plurality of file chunks;

d) performing an HTTP request, by the application, to read the file or the plurality of file chunks from the one or more locations or the one or more Uniform Resource Locators; and

e) returning the file or the plurality of file chunks to the user from the one or more file locations or from the one or more Uniform Resource Locators.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of, prior to the receiving step, separating the file into a plurality of file chunks if a size for the file is greater than a pre-determined file size threshold.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of, prior to the receiving step, replicating the file or the plurality of file chunks according to a replication policy.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of, prior to the receiving step, running a plurality of background worker processes.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the request is to stream the file or the plurality of file chunks to be displayed to the user on the client.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the request is for a user to download the file or the plurality of file chunks from an online file folder.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the plurality of file chunks are each 16 MB in size.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the file storage system comprises one or more storage node servers communicatively coupled to the network.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the application comprises an Application Programming Interface.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of communicating the request for the file or the plurality of file chunks and the customized metadata about the file from the user interface to the application.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of communicating the request for the file or the plurality of file chunks and the customized metadata about the file from the application to the one or more tracker servers.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more file locations or the one or more Uniform Resource Locators comprise a namespace maintained by the one or more databases.

13. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of displaying the one or more Uniform Resource Locators associated with the one or more file locations within the file storage system to the user on the user interface.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the HTTP request is a GET command.