UTILIZING A DISPERSED STORAGE NETWORK ACCESS TOKEN MODULE TO ACQUIRE DIGITAL CONTENT FROM A DIGITAL CONTENT PROVIDER

• US 20120198066A1
• Filed: 01/10/2012
• Published: 08/02/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pure Storage, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Cleversafe Incorporated (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Grube, Gary W., Markison, Timothy W., Dhuse, Greg, Resch, Jason K., Volvovski, Ilya, Leggette, Wesley
• Granted Patent: US 10,402,268 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/225
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1008 in individual solid state devices G06F11/1004 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1076 Parity data used in redundant arrays of independent storages, e.g. in RAID systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1402 Saving, restoring, recovering or retrying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1446 Point-in-time backing up or restoration of persistent data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1448 Management of the data involved in backup or backup restore
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/17331 Distributed shared memory [DSM], e.g. remote direct memory access [RDMA]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/805 using a security table for the storage sub-system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/06 Digital input from, or digital output to, record carriers , e.g. RAID, emulated record carriers or networked record carriers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0604 Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0619 in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0665 at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/085 Secret sharing or secret splitting, e.g. threshold schemes

Abstract

A method begins with a computing device receiving a request to acquire digital content from a digital content provider and forwarding the request to a dispersed storage network (DSN) pre-paid module. The method continues with the DSN pre-paid module validating the request, generating a plurality of sets of at least a threshold number of digital content read requests, and sending the plurality of sets of the at least a threshold number of digital content read requests to the digital content provider via the computing device when the request to acquire the digital content is validated. The method continues with at least one of the DSN pre-paid module and the computing device receiving a plurality of sets of at least a decoded threshold number of encoded data slices and decoding the plurality of sets of the at least a decoded threshold number of encoded data slices to produce the digital content.

Claims

1. A method comprises:

when a computing device is paired with a distributed storage network (DSN) pre-paid module;

receiving, by the computing device, a request to use the DSN pre-paid module to acquire digital content from a digital content provider;

forwarding, by the computing device, the request to the DSN pre-paid module;

validating, by the DSN pre-paid module, the request to acquire the digital content;

when the request to acquire the digital content is validated;

generating, by the DSN pre-paid module, a plurality of sets of at least a threshold number of digital content read requests;

sending, by the DSN pre-paid module, the plurality of sets of the at least a threshold number of digital content read requests to the digital content provider via the computing device;

receiving, by at least one of the DSN pre-paid module and the computing device, a plurality of sets of at least a decoded threshold number of encoded data slices; and

decoding, by the at least one of the DSN pre-paid module and the computing device, the plurality of sets of the at least a decoded threshold number of encoded data slices to produce the digital content.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprises:

sending, by the DSN pre-paid module, a storage location request to the digital content provider via the computing device, wherein the storage location request is requesting information regarding at least one of where the digital content is stored and how the digital content is stored;

or

accessing, by the DSN pre-paid module, local memory to determine the information regarding the at least one of where the digital content is stored and how the digital content is stored; and

generating, by the DSN pre-paid module, the plurality of sets of at least a threshold number of digital content read requests in accordance with the information regarding the at least one of where the digital content is stored and how the digital content is stored.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the validating the request to acquire the digital content further comprises:

validating the identity of the digital content provider by at least one of;

determining that locally stored digital content provider identification information includes the identity of the digital content provider; and

transceiving, via the computing device, a validation process to link the DSN pre-paid module with the digital content provider.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprises, prior to generating the plurality of sets of the at least a threshold number of digital content read requests:

generating, by the DSN pre-paid module, a set of credential read requests to retrieve acquisition credentials;

sending, by the DSN pre-paid module, the set of credential read requests to the digital content provider via the computing device;

obtaining, by at least one of the DSN pre-paid module and the computing device, at least a threshold number of credential slices;

decoding, by the at least one of the DSN pre-paid module and the computing device, the at least a threshold number of credential slices to produce the acquisition credentials; and

verifying, by the at least one of the DSN pre-paid module and the computing device, that the request to acquire the digital content is in accordance with the acquisition credentials.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the obtaining the at least a threshold number of credential slices comprises at least one of:

retrieving at least one of the at least a threshold number of credential slices from local memory of the DSN pre-paid module; and

receiving at least some of the at least a threshold number of credential slices from the digital content provider.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the validating the request to acquire the digital content further comprises:

accessing a pre-paid file that includes one or more of;

available credit, expiration criteria, identity of digital content that can be acquired, and identity of the digital content provider; and

verifying that the request is compliant with information of the pre-paid file.

7. The method of claim 6 further comprises:

after the digital content is acquired, updating, by the DSN pre-paid module, the pre-paid file.

8. A dispersed storage network (DSN) pre-paid module comprises:

an interface module for interfacing with a computing device;

memory; and

a processing module operably coupled to the memory and operable to, when the DSN pre-paid module is paired with a computing device;

receive, from the computing device, a request to use the DSN pre-paid module to acquire digital content from a digital content provider;

validate the request to acquire the digital content;

when the request to acquire the digital content is validated;

generate a plurality of sets of at least a threshold number of digital content read requests;

send the plurality of sets of the at least a threshold number of digital content read requests to the digital content provider via the computing device;

receive, in conjunction with the computing device, a plurality of sets of at least a decoded threshold number of encoded data slices; and

decode, in conjunction with the computing device, the plurality of sets of the at least a decoded threshold number of encoded data slices to produce the digital content.

9. The DSN pre-paid module of claim 8, wherein the processing module is further operable to:

send a storage location request to the digital content provider via the computing device, wherein the storage location request is requesting information regarding at least one of where the digital content is stored and how the digital content is stored;

or

access local memory to determine the information regarding the at least one of where the digital content is stored and how the digital content is stored; and

generate the plurality of sets of at least a threshold number of digital content read requests in accordance with the information regarding the at least one of where the digital content is stored and how the digital content is stored.

10. The DSN pre-paid module of claim 8, wherein the processing module is further operable to validate the request to acquire the digital content by:

validating the identity of the digital content provider by at least one of;

determining that locally stored digital content provider identification information includes the identity of the digital content provider; and

transceiving, via the computing device, a validation process to link the DSN pre-paid module with the digital content provider.

11. The DSN pre-paid module of claim 8, wherein the processing module is further operable, prior to generating the plurality of sets of the at least a threshold number of digital content read requests, to:

generate a set of credential read requests to retrieve acquisition credentials;

send the set of credential read requests to the digital content provider via the computing device;

obtain, in conjunction the computing device, at least a threshold number of credential slices;

decode, in conjunction with the computing device, the at least a threshold number of credential slices to produce the acquisition credentials; and

verify, in conjunction with the computing device, that the request to acquire the digital content is in accordance with the acquisition credentials.

12. The DSN pre-paid module of claim 11, wherein the processing module is further operable to obtain the at least a threshold number of credential slices by at least one of:

retrieving at least one of the at least a threshold number of credential slices from local memory of the DSN pre-paid module; and

receiving at least some of the at least a threshold number of credential slices from the digital content provider.

13. The DSN pre-paid module of claim 8, wherein the processing module is further operable to validate the request to acquire the digital content by:

accessing a pre-paid file that includes one or more of;

available credit, expiration criteria, identity of digital content that can be acquired, an identity of the digital content provider; and

verifying that the request is compliant with information of the pre-paid file.

14. A method for execution by a digital content provider, the method comprises:

receiving, from a computing device, a request to use a dispersed storage network (DSN) pre-paid module to acquire digital content from the digital content provider;

validating the request to acquire the digital content;

when the request to acquire the digital content is validated;

receiving a plurality of sets of at least a threshold number of digital content read requests;

accessing a set of dispersed storage (DS) units to retrieve a plurality of sets of at least a decoded threshold number of encoded data slices, wherein the digital content is stored as a plurality of sets of encoded data slices in accordance with a DS error coding function; and

sending the plurality of sets of the at least a decoded threshold number of encoded data slices to the computing device.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the validating the request to acquire the digital content comprises:

validating the identity of the DSN pre-paid module by at least one of;

determining that locally stored DSN pre-paid module identification information includes the identity of the DSN pre-paid module; and

transceiving, via the computing device, a validation process to link the DSN pre-paid module with the digital content provider.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the validating the request to acquire the digital content comprises:

accessing a pre-paid file that includes one or more of;

available credit, expiration criteria, identity of digital content that can be acquired, an identity of the DSN pre-paid module; and

verifying that the request is compliant with information of the pre-paid file.