System and Method for Exposing Cloud Stored Data to a Content Delivery Network

• US 20140108474A1
• Filed: 10/16/2012
• Published: 04/17/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/16/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rackspace US Incorporated (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Rackspace US Incorporated (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Holt, Gregory Lee, David, Goetz
• Granted Patent: US 9,015,212 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/827
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/178 Techniques for file synchronisation in file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/18 File system types
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/182 Distributed file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0611 in relation to response time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0644 Management of space entities, e.g. partitions, extents, pools
• 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 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• 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 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching

Abstract

A system for exposing data stored in a cloud computing system to a content delivery network provider includes a database configured to receive and store metadata about the data, the database being implemented in the cloud computing system to store configuration metadata for the data related to the content delivery network, and an origin server configured to receive requests for the data from the content delivery network provider, and configured to provide the data to the content delivery network provider based on the metadata.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a storage area configured to storing data, the storage area being implemented in a cloud computing system;

a database configured to receive and store metadata about the data, the database being implemented in the cloud computing system; and

an origin server configured to receive requests for the data from a content delivery network provider, and configured to provide the data to the content delivery network provider based on the metadata.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the requests received by the origin server are formatted according to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the metadata includes one or more attributes selected from the group consisting of:

an account, a container, a time-to-live, a flag indicating whether the data is content delivery network enabled, a purge frequency, a list of geographic regions in which the content delivery network provider should cache the data, a list of geographic regions in which the content delivery network provider should not cache the data, a priority, and an identifier indicating the associated data.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the metadata includes a hash value; and

the origin server is configured to provide the data to the content delivery network provider based on the hash value.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein:

the metadata is stored in a hash container based on the hash value; and

the hash container is mathematically related to the hash value.

6. A method for exposing data stored in a cloud computer system to a content delivery network provider, the method comprising:

receiving a request for data from the content network provider, the request including an identifier associated with the data;

determining whether the data is configured to be exposed to the content delivery network provider by consulting metadata associated with the identifier;

if it is determined that the data should be exposed, returning a response including the data associated with the identifier to the content delivery network provider.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

if it is determined that the data should be exposed, returning a response including a negative status indicator to the content delivery network provider.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the step of receiving the request for data includes receiving a request formatted according to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

9. The method of claim 6, wherein:

the step of receiving the request for data includes receiving a hash value associated with the data; and

the step of determining whether the data is configured to be exposed to the content delivery network provider includes consulting metadata associated with the hash value.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein the determining whether the data is configured to be exposed to the content delivery network provider by consulting metadata associated with the identifier includes checking a boolean flag for indicating that the content should be exposed.

11. The method of claim 6, wherein consulting the metadata includes consulting an indirection block.

12. The method of claim 6, wherein receiving a request for data from the content network provider includes parsing a URL within the request to obtain a hash value associated with the data.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein:

consulting the metadata includes performing a mathematical operation of the hash value to determine a hash container containing the metadata.

14. The method of claim 6, where returning the response includes returning a header including a portion of the metadata.

15. A method for configuring a cloud computing system to expose data to a content delivery network provider, the method comprising:

receiving a request to expose data stored in the cloud computing system to the content delivery network provider, the request including a configuration attribute associated with the data;

creating a metadata container in the cloud computing system, the metadata container including the configuration attribute;

generating a hash value corresponding to the metadata container based on the configuration attribute;

storing the metadata container in the cloud computing system in a hash container associated with the hash value; and

exposing the data associated with the configuration attribute to the content delivery network provider.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the step of receiving the request includes receiving the request formatted according to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

17. The method of claim 15, wherein receiving the request to expose data including the configuration attribute associated with the data includes receiving an attribute selected from the group consisting of:

an account, a container, a time-to-live, a flag indicating whether the data is content delivery network enabled, a purge frequency, a list of geographic regions in which the content delivery network provider should cache the data, a list of geographic regions in which the content delivery network provider should not cache the data, a priority, and an identifier indicating the associated data.

18. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

performing a mathematical operation on the hash value to determine the associated hash container.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein the step of exposing the data associated with the configuration attribute to the content delivery network provider includes returning a response to the content delivery network provider including the data and a configuration attribute.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein the step of generating the hash value includes generating the hash value using an algorithm selected from the group consisting of:

MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-2.