Middleware framework for distributed cloud storage

Abstract

The device people use to capture multimedia has changed over the years with the rise of smartphones. Smartphones are readily available, easy to use and capture multimedia with high quality. While consumers capture all of this media, the storage requirements are not changing significantly. Therefore, people look towards cloud storage solutions. The typical consumer stores files within a single provider. They want a solution that is quick to access, reliable, and secure. Using multiple providers can reduce cost and improve overall performance. We present a middleware framework called Distributed Indexed Storage in the Cloud (DISC) to improve all aspects a user expects in a cloud provider. The consumer provides the middleware files, which get processed through user policies, and stored within the cloud. The process of uploading and downloading is essentially transparent. The upload and download performance happens simultaneously by distributing a subset of the file across multiple cloud providers that it deems fit based on policies. Reliability is another important feature of DISC. To improve reliability, we propose a solution that replicates the same subset of the file across different providers. This is beneficial when one provider is unresponsive, the data can be pulled from another provider with the same subset. Security has great importance when dealing with consumer's data. We inherently gain security when improving reliability. Since the file is distributed using subsets, not one provider has the full file. In our experiment, performance improvements show when delivering and retrieving files compared to the standard approach. The results are promising, saving upwards of eight seconds in processing time. With the expansion of more cloud providers, the results are expected to improve.